


And you would be there too

by Em_Jaye



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Childhood Sweethearts, Christmas Fluff, Cunnilingus, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Kid Clint Barton, Kid Fic, Kid Natasha Romanov, Kid Pietro Maximoff, Kid Sam Wilson, Kid Wanda Maximoff, Mentions of Cancer, Oral Sex, Parent Darcy Lewis, Parent Steve Rogers, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Between them, Wanda, Pietro, and Natasha all looked from one and then the other before Natasha finally spoke up. “You already know each other?”That was enough to break the spell. They both spoke at once.“We—uh—went to school together,” Steve said.Just as Darcy managed to stammer, “We were friends in high school.”
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Comments: 385
Kudos: 509





	1. September October November

**Author's Note:**

> An idea inspired by the amazing and wonderful grimeysociey and the Netflix reboot of The Babysitter's Club and also my desire to be one of the cool kids that does a fake-dating fic for the holidays. We all deserve that, right? Haven't we suffered enough this year? 
> 
> Title is from lyrics to "Christmas Tree Farm" ala my sweet baby Tay. 
> 
> tw/cw: one mention of a transphobic/homophobic slur

Steve worried about Natasha.

Of course he did. She was his daughter. She was twelve years old. She had lost her mother when she was three, and she hardy had any friends.

He knew she wasn’t miserable or unpopular. But she didn’t seem to connect with most people her age. With the exception of the friends she’d made in first grade, Sam and Clint (who each lived in the house on either side of them) she kept mostly to herself.

It wasn’t the worst thing, he knew. Sam and Clint were both good kids from good homes and he never worried about her spending too much time with either of them. But he worried about her. He wanted her to have friends. Girl friends would be nice, he had thought on more than one occasion. If only because she had so few women in her life anymore.

So when, two weeks into the start of seventh grade, she started talking about her new friend, Wanda Maximoff, he perked up. Wanda was new to Natasha’s school. She’d just moved to Brooklyn with her mom and her twin brother at the end of the summer.

“She’s from California,” she said excitedly over dinner one night in early September. “Isn’t that cool?”

Steve smiled and resisted the urge to tell her to take smaller bites. “What part of California?”

“Southern,” Natasha said around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. At this, he did raise his eyebrows and she blushed, putting a hand over her mouth while she finished chewing before she continued. “Her mom’s in PR—she’s _really_ cool. She used to work with like, a bunch of famous people in Hollywood.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, trying not to feel jealous. He was pretty sure his daughter would never describe him as _really cool._ In fact, if he thought about it at all, he was pretty sure that no one had _ever_ described him as really cool.

“Yeah, and now they’re here and she’s working in the city. She probably has a bunch of famous clients here now too.”

“Probably.”

“Anyway, is it okay if Wanda and Pietro come over after school tomorrow?” she asked, throwing him off. 

“Oh, you’re…friends with her brother, too?” 

Natasha nodded. “They’re kind of a packaged deal.” She shrugged. “Pietro’s cool. I mean, he’s kind of a flirt, but whatever. He’s nice, too. And so is Wanda. Wanda’s really cool. They both are. I want to make sure they have enough friends, so their mom wants to stay here,” she went on. “And we’re all in the same bio class, so I thought if I invited them over here, then maybe Sam and Clint would come over too and we could have like,” her shoulders bounced a second time. “I don’t know. Like, a study group once a week.” 

Steve smiled. “Natasha, you can have your friends over a few days a week,” he assured her. “You don’t have to pretend it’s just to study…though I appreciate you leading with that.” 

When she was excited, she looked like she was six years old again. “Thanks, Dad,” she said quickly, her hand darting under the table. 

“Hey,” Steve pointed a finger at her. “No texting at the table. Your invitation can wait ten minutes.” 

Her shoulders fell. “What if I’m done?” 

“You’re not,” he assured her, pointing to her nearly full plate. “Finish your dinner and then you can talk to your friends.” 

She sighed again and left her phone in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “Fine.” 

He didn’t know what he was expecting with names like Wanda and Pietro Maximoff and a mom who allegedly worked with celebrities, but the two kids who trundled into his home the following afternoon did not fit the image he’d conjured in his mind. He’d been expecting Instagram kids, he realized after a minute. Kids that couldn’t get their phones out of their faces and did everything as if performing in front of an audience of followers. Like the students in his classes who thought he couldn’t tell when they were recording TikTok videos when he turned his back to write on the board.

But Natasha’s new friends were quiet and seemingly sweet and down-to-earth from what he could gather from grading papers in his office while they took over the living room. Sam and Clint were talking excitedly about the tryouts for spring sports, cajoling Pietro into going out for track and field with them after seeing him sprint in gym class. 

He didn’t mind them at all, he realized after the third time they’d convened at his house—this time taking over the porch to soak up the late September sun. Especially because Wanda seemed to have no trouble demanding they all stop goofing around long enough to actually study for a test they had coming up. 

“Hey, what are we doing for Thanksgiving?” Natasha asked the week before the holiday, while she dried the dinner dishes he handed her. 

Steve frowned. “Same thing we do every year.” 

“So Aunt Carol and Aunt Maria and Monica will come here?” 

“Yeah,” he answered easily. “I just talked to Aunt Carol last night. She said they’ll be here Wednesday night so make sure your room is clean and you get out your sleeping bag.” 

“It will be,” she promised without blinking. “But that’s all we have on the guest list, right?” 

His frown deepened. “It’s not really a guest li—” he stopped, realizing she was trying to lead him somewhere. “What is it?” he asked. “Who do you want to invite?” 

Natasha pressed her lips together. “Well, I was just thinking…y’know, we always make way too much food.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“And it’s…y’know, in the spirit of the season to reach out to our friends and neighbors who maybe don’t have any big family around to share the day with…” 

“Natasha—” 

“Wouldn’t it be nice to invite the Maximoffs over for dinner? And then _Mrs_. Maximoff can have a friend in the neighborhood too and everyone can get to know each other and—” 

“Sure,” he said without thinking about it. 

She blinked. “Really?” 

He smiled. “Did I step on your closing statement, counselor?” 

“Kind of,” she admitted, looking impressed. “I thought I’d have more time to make my point. What convinced you?” 

“You brought out the big guns too soon with referencing ‘the spirit of the season’,” he advised. “If you really wanted to present all your points and make your full case, I would recommend holding phrases like that until the end.” 

She absorbed this with a slow and thoughtful nod. “Thanks, Your Honor,” she said seriously before she grinned. “So wait, I can invite them? Really?” 

“Yes,” he laughed lightly. “You’re right, we have more than enough and it’s a very sweet thing to invite someone new to the area to your house for Thanksgiving.” 

“I mean, it’s not like they don’t know _anybody_ ,” Natasha considered, returning her attention to the dishes without him having to remind her. “Mrs. Maximoff _did_ grow up around here. But Wanda said her parents live in like,” she squinted in thought, “New Mexico now or something?” She shrugged. “Anyway, she said they didn’t have plans, so I _really_ hope they come.” 

Steve continued scrubbing the plates and pans he’d used to prepare dinner with a fleeting thought that the Lewises, who lived two doors down from the house where he’d grown up and three blocks from where he lived now, had moved to New Mexico a few years ago. 

Moving back to Brooklyn had not been in the plan Darcy Lewis-Maximoff had made for her life. Though, if she was being fair, very few things in her life had ever gone according to plan. 

She had planned to go to the same college as her high school boyfriend, because the idea of spending even more than twenty-four hours away from each other had felt like torture. But he joined the army after high school and she was offered a full scholarship out of state, and despite thinking he was the love of her life when she was seventeen, she’d never seen him again. 

She had planned on living in Los Angeles for exactly one year after grad school, mooching off her big sister, Jane, and saving enough to buy a better car. She ended up a resident for almost eighteen years. 

She had planned on going out on exactly one date with Erik Maximoff, just enough to shut him up and get him to stop pestering her while she was trying to make coffee and wait tables. That date had lasted fourteen years. 

And thirteen years ago, she had planned on having exactly _one_ baby and had ended up with two. 

Along the way, she had also not planned on falling into public relations and winding up being the go-to publicist for anyone starring in a superhero movie for the last ten years. Nor had she planned on her husband falling in love with and leaving her for his best friend, Charles. And she certainly hadn’t planned on the stress of that divorce, amicable though it was, being so much that she didn’t even want to _look_ at most of her life in California. Hadn’t planned on packing up her kids and driving them and all their stuff all the way back to Brooklyn for as close to a fresh start as she could handle. And definitely hadn’t planned on spending her thirty-ninth year in a house four blocks from her childhood home, staring at herself in the mirror every morning asking, “What the _entire_ fuck are we doing?” 

But life takes some funny turns sometimes. 

Life back in Brooklyn was surprisingly good. She liked her house; even though it was much smaller than where they’d lived in Santa Barbara, it felt more like home than that place ever had. She liked her job; Tony had given her an easy transfer from Stark Agency’s LA branch to Manhattan and a whole new portfolio of clients to represent. She liked her neighborhood; she’d always liked this neighborhood, even as a kid, it had felt safe and connected in a way that most places just didn’t anymore. 

And most importantly, her kids were happy. Pietro and Wanda had made a handful of new friends right away, to her relief. They talked to their dad almost every day over video and, thanks to all the extra tutoring and insanely high tuition she’d shelled out back in California, had landed well ahead of the curve in their new school. 

“You don’t want to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for just the three of us, do you?” Wanda asked abruptly one night in the middle of November. 

Darcy blinked, her slice of pizza halfway to her mouth. “Uh. I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it.” 

Last Thanksgiving, she’d been freshly divorced and miserable. She’d sent the twins to Erik and Charles’ for the long weekend and had been drunk by ten in the morning, sick by noon, and in bed for the night by six. 

Obviously, none of that was on the menu this year. Not that she wanted a repeat. Ever. 

“Okay, well don’t think about it,” Wanda suggested, reaching for the garlic sauce. “‘Cause Nat’s dad said we should come to their house for Thanksgiving. He’s like, a really good cook.” 

“A _really_ good cook,” Pietro chimed in, his mouth full of food. He winced at the look his mother shot him. “Sorry,” he said, still chewing. 

Darcy frowned. She was a lot of things, but she was definitely _not_ a really good cook. She wasn’t even a decent cook. They ate takeout more than they didn’t. The thought of cooking an entire Thanksgiving feast made her want to reach for the phone and order something ten days early. 

Or… 

“Okay,” she heard herself say out loud. “If you’re _sure_ we were actually invited.” 

“We were definitely invited,” Pietro said, his mouth finally free of food. “I asked Natasha’s dad yesterday just to be sure. He said the more the merrier.” 

He must have actually said that, Darcy reasoned, because her son would never put those words together on his own in a million years. “Okay,” she said again. “Can you ask Natasha if we can bring something?” 

“I told her you’re really good at sweet potato casserole,” Wanda said, already a few steps ahead. “And she said she’s never tried it, but her dad said if you want to bring one, he’d appreciate it.” 

She nodded. “I can handle sweet potato casserole.” 

Because Wanda was right. She _was_ really good at that. 

So Darcy was planning to spend Thanksgiving with a handful of strangers to appease her children and to save herself from having to cook or order in. She was planning on a nice, forgettable holiday meal where she could make small talk about the school district, her job, Natasha’s father’s job, and be home before it got too late. 

She might have even said she was planning on anyone—her ex-husband, a Jonas brother, the French Prime Minister, _literally anyone—_ other than her high school boyfriend coming around the corner as Natasha welcomed them into her home. 

“Steve?”

He stopped short, his eyes widening in surprise. “ _Darcy_?”

She blinked, not trusting her own sight. The last time she’d seen Steve Rogers, he weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds and was closer to her height than this walking refrigerator who now wore his face.

But his face was the same. He still had the same blue eyes that crinkled at the sides, beneath the beard, she could tell he still had the same smile, the same full pink lips that had given her lips their first kiss when she was ten years old.

They were stuck on opposite ends of the foyer. Her coat still halfway off her shoulders, his hands still balling up a dish towel.

Between them, Wanda, Pietro, and Natasha all looked from one and then the other before Natasha finally spoke up. “You already know each other?”

That was enough to break the spell. They both spoke at once.

“We—uh—went to school together,” Steve said.

Just as Darcy managed to stammer, “We were friends in high school.”

“Friends in high school?” a familiar voice scoffed from the nearest doorway. Darcy turned to see Carol, Steve’s younger sister, roll her eyes with a cheeky smile. “That’s putting it mildly.” She crossed the room in two quick strides and wrapped Darcy in a quick hug before she swatted at her arm and turned back to the kids. “Joined at the lip is more like it.”

Steve looked like he wanted to die, matching the level of burning Darcy felt on her own cheeks as Carol herded the youngest three out of the foyer. “I see Carol hasn’t lost her flair for subtlety,” she said with a tight, embarrassed smile. It took everything she had not to start messing with her hair, smoothing down her clothes, checking to make sure her lipstick hadn't smudged.

“No,” he agreed ruefully. “She’s pretty much leaning into it full time these days.” He coughed lightly. “Let me take your coat.”

That was Thursday.

Steve spent most of Friday trying to convince himself he wasn’t thinking about Darcy. That he wasn’t replaying the things she’d said and that he _definitely_ wasn’t fixating on little things he’d let himself forget, like the sound of her laughter and the way she still twisted her dark hair around her finger and bit her bottom lip when she was thinking.

By Saturday, he’d done a fairly decent job of stuffing all the feelings and memories she’d stirred up back into the lockbox he kept somewhere around the middle of his chest, and by Sunday, his sister and sister-in-law and niece packed up their Subaru and headed home to Louisiana, giving him plenty to think and worry about that had nothing to do with Darcy Lewis.

Darcy Lewis- _Maximoff_ , he reminded himself.

Not that he was thinking about her.

Because he definitely wasn’t.

And then on Monday, it didn’t matter if he wanted to think about her or not, he didn’t have a choice. He had to stop at the middle school for a meeting with their history department about lower grade AP classes and wound up breaking up a fistfight near the gym on his way out. Three eighth graders with bad skin and thick necks…

…and Pietro Maximoff.

Two of the three other boys ran off, but Steve managed to hook one by his jacket and keep him in place long enough for one of the other teachers to escort him to the principal’s office while Steve walked Pietro down to the vacant nurse’s room.

He handed him an icepack for the shiner swelling at his left eye and leaned against the minifridge, his arms crossed over his chest. “You okay?” he asked finally.

“I’ve never been punched in the face before,” Pietro admitted, his face contorted beneath the ice pack. “Hurts way more than I thought it would.”

Steve nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it does,” he said, reaching out to adjust the boy’s hand so he was actually covering the worst of the bruise. “What were you fighting about?”

“Just…nothing,” he muttered.

“Nothing?” Steve repeated. “You got punched in the face over nothing?”

“You’re just going to tell me I shouldn’t have said anything,” Pietro grumbled.

He smirked. “Try me.” When his request was met with silence, he cleared his throat. “And between you and me, I know they’re calling your mom right now, so you should probably run your story past someone else first. I don’t think she’s going to believe that you got that black eye over nothing.”

“Y’know, Jake Wyatt’s a real asshole,” Pietro said suddenly.

“That the other guy?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, and Steve reached over and tilted his head back for him, moving his hand a second time to hold his ice pack in place. “He and his boy band were making fun of this kid, Marty, saying he shouldn’t be allowed in to change in the boys’ locker room and they were going to get their moms to like, petition the school about it and put it online and stuff—”

Steve frowned. “Any reason?”

Pietro’s shoulder moved in a shrug. “I don’t know. I guess Marty used to be a girl or something but whatever. He’s not now. I just told them they should leave him alone.”

He raised his eyebrows, his heart going out to the kid before he could stop himself. “And then Jake Wyatt hit you?”

“Uh, no,” Pietro said, haltingly. “Then he said I was probably a…” he coughed, looking uncomfortable. “A tranny fag too. And then Scott Donovan hit me. And then I said my grandma hits harder than that which, um,” he looked up again and winced. “Isn’t true. And then Scott hit me again. And I hit him back. And _then_ Jake hit me.”

Steve nodded slowly, taking this in. “Wow,” he said after a moment. “Jake Wyatt really is an asshole.”

Pietro snorted a laugh and then winced. “Ow-ow-ow,” he whined as blood started to spurt from his nose.

Steve jumped up again. “Alright,” he said patiently, grabbing a towel. “Take it easy. Don’t laugh too hard the next couple of days,” he advised before he coughed again. “And you can’t tell anyone I said that.”

From beneath his icepack and his bloody towel, Pietro grinned. “Secret’s safe with me, Mr. R.”

By the time Darcy arrived—straight from work if her silk blouse, pencil skirt and heels were any indication—not that he was looking—Pietro’s face had stopped bleeding and Steve had spoken with the principal on his behalf.

Darcy’s eyes widened and she dropped her purse at the sight of her son. “Oh my God!” she cried, rushing past Steve to kneel in front of him as he sat, waiting for her in the front office. “Are you okay? What happened? Did you start this?”

“From what I can tell, he didn’t,” Steve assured her, stepping up to the doorway. “I already talked to Christine about it; she’s not going to suspend him.”

“You can’t be mad at me,” Pietro informed her, squinting with his one good eye, and looking quite pitiful. “I was standing up for the little guy.”

Steve watched Darcy smother a look of pure affection as she reached out and combed her nails through his curly hair. “Is that what you were doing?” she asked softly before she handed him her car keys. “Go wait in the car; I’ll be out in a minute.” She waited until he’d ambled out of the office before she stood and then dropped into the chair her son had just occupied, letting her face fall into her hands for a moment.

He felt sorry for her. If it had been Natasha who’d been in a fight—and it _was_ Natasha on occasion—he would have felt just as frantic, just as scattered. He suddenly wished they were friends. Real friends. Not just people who used to date and hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. If they were real friends, he could have felt comfortable enough to sit down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, tell her she was a good mom, and that Pietro was going to be fine.

As it was, all he managed was another light cough. “Are you okay?”

She looked up, seemingly surprised to find him still standing there. “Yeah,” she said, shaking her head like she was clearing the cobwebs. “I just…” she let out a heavy breath. “He’s never been in a fight before.” Her face contorted and she looked back in the direction of the parking lot. “And was that—that _inmate_ I passed in the hallway? Was that the kid who hit him?”

Steve stifled a laugh at her description. “Uh, yeah I think so.”

“I’m sorry,” she swiped a hand over her face again. “I’m all over the place. You said you talked to Christine?” she repeated. “Do you mean Dr. Everhart?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Christine Everhart. But all I did was convince her not to suspend him,” he went on. “I don’t think I spared you a parent meeting.”

Darcy’s full lips pursed. “Wonder if she’d be averse to skipping the parent meeting and instead letting _me_ fistfight the mom of the kid who just broke my kid’s face.” She offered a brief smile. “Think she’d go for that?”

He chuckled. “Phrase it like an educational opportunity,” he suggested. “She just might.”

“Good to know,” Darcy said and clicked a finger gun at him.

Before they could joke anymore, the door to Christine’s office opened and she asked Darcy to come in. “Steve,” she called, as he was gathering his things. “Hang on just a second? I want a word after I’m finished.”

He nodded, fighting a very unprofessional groan. He didn’t want a word with Christine. No matter which words she chose, he rarely ever enjoyed them. With a quick glance at the clock, he texted Natasha to let her know he would be home a little later than usual and a reminder to make sure she was doing her homework.

He received a response that was just a photo of an open math book and a partially filled out worksheet next to a cup of hot chocolate. He smiled and tucked his phone away as Christine’s door opened and Darcy reappeared.

“All good?” he asked, idly shuffling the folders and papers he hadn’t managed to migrate into his satchel yet.

She nodded. “Yeah, I have to do a bunch of shit, but he’s not suspended,” she smiled before she rolled her eyes. "Big shocker: the transphobic garbage child and his friends have been a problem in the past."

"Color me surprised," he said dryly.

“I owe you one,” she said abruptly.

“No, no, it’s okay—”

“No, seriously,” she reached into her purse and took out a card. “I do. Thank you for waiting with him. And I meant to give you this earlier,” she went on, offering him a business card with all her personal numbers. “But our kids are friends,” she reminded. “We live in the same neighborhood—”

“Again,” he added without thinking.

Her lips slid into a small smile and she nodded. “Right. Again. So, you should be able to get a hold of me if something comes up.”

“Right,” he mirrored her nod. “Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll—”

“Steve?” Christine’s voice preceded her head popping around the doorway to her office. “If you have a second.”

Darcy looked from Steve to Christine and back again, an unreadable expression on her face. “Well, I’m certainly not going to keep you from _that_ ,” she said lightly, almost under her breath.

He frowned, hoping she wasn’t inferring what it sounded like. “No, it’s just—” He stopped. He didn’t need to explain this to Darcy. There wasn’t anything to explain. And even if there was, she didn’t care.

“I’ll see you later,” she said with a friendly tap to his arm. “And thank you,” she said again. “Seriously. I owe you. Not just saying that.”

Christine waited until Darcy had left before she joined him at the front desk counter. “I just wanted to remind you that you still haven’t RSVP’d for Friday.”

“Friday?” he repeated before his eyes landed on the nearest calendar and the big red marker around Friday’s date. He fought back another groan. “Right. Friday.”

“District holiday party,” Christine reminded, her brown eyes widening as her eyebrows lifted. “You are coming, right?”

“I, uh,” he ran his thumbnail over his brow, a nervous habit he’d never been able to break. “I don’t know. I don’t know what Natasha has going on—”

“Steve,” Christine laughed. “It’s just one night and you daughter is practically a teenager. We all want to see you there.”

“Um,” he felt cornered and shrugged. “Sure, yeah, I can…stop by.”

“Great! Everyone will be so happy to hear it.” She brightened considerably before she gave his forearm a friendly squeeze and started back toward her office. “Oh,” she stopped and turned around. “And if you show up without a date again, I can’t promise there won’t be a slew of single women waiting to catch you under the mistletoe.”

He faked a laugh and headed for his car, kicking himself for not being a better, faster liar and trying not to dwell on the fact that he’d just RSVP’d for a night in his own personal hell.

Natasha was upstairs for the night by the time Steve retrieved Darcy’s card from his wallet and worked up the nerve to unlock his phone.

“Darcy Lewis,” she answered in a cool, professional tone on the second ring.

“Darcy, hi,” he said and winced. He sounded like he was fifteen again. “It’s Steve.” That was appropriate, he thought. Since he _felt_ like he was fifteen again. Palms sweating and a mouth that had run dry at the thought of asking Darcy Lewis to go to a party with him.

“Oh,” her voice warmed considerably. “Hi, Steve. I didn’t recognize the number, I thought you were a client. What’s up?”

He took a deep breath. “I was, uh—”

“Hang on one second,” she said quickly and muffled the phone. “Wanda, your brownies are burning!” she called.

“No they still have ten minutes!” he heard Wanda’s voice drift back.

“If you leave them in for ten more minutes they’re going to catch on fire! Take them out please!” She returned a moment later. “Sorry, hi, how are you?”

He smiled to himself, wondering if she still would have been policing Wanda’s baking if he _had_ been a work call, and then cleared his throat. “Fine, good. How are you? How’s Pietro?”

“He’ll be okay,” Darcy said breezily. “He’ll look like Rocky for a few days, but I don’t think there’s any long-term damage.” She paused. “Is that…why you called?”

Did she sound disappointed?

He shook the thought from his head. If anything, she was just confused. And she had every right to be. “Uh, no,” he admitted. “I mean, I’m glad that he _is_ okay, but, uh, no. I was actually calling to—uh—”

“Yeees?” she asked, drawing the word out slowly, definitely waiting for him to make his point.

Steve closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. This was so stupid. “I was wondering if it's too early to cash in on that favor you offered. This afternoon.”

Another pause. And then, brightly, “Oh! No, of course not. I’m glad you’re taking me up on it, actually.” He breathed a small sigh of relief before she asked, “What’s up? What can I do for you?”

“No pressure,” he started by saying. “Please don’t feel like you have to agree if you’ve already got something going on but—uh—there’s this…thing I have to go to. For work. On Friday. This…holiday. Party. Thing.”

“This Friday?” she clarified.

“Yeah, I know it’s short-notice, so don’t feel like—”

“No, I’m free,” she interrupted him. “I was just making sure we were talking about the same day. What’s up? You want me to have Natasha sleep over or something so you can be footloose and fancy-free for a night?”

He frowned in confusion. _That’s_ what she thought he was asking for? A babysitter? “Oh, uh, no, that’s not—” he coughed and shook his head. This really was ridiculous. No matter how she made him feel, the fact was that he _wasn’t_ fifteen years old anymore and this tiptoeing around the question was just confusing them both. “I was hoping you’d come with me.”

“Come with you?” she repeated after another beat. “To your…party?”

“If you don’t want to,” he rushed on, “it’s no big deal. It’s just that…well…I don’t know, I really don’t want to go by myself,” he admitted. “Because every time I do, there’s this initiative everyone takes to try and set me up with any single woman in the room and—”

“So you need a bodyguard,” she asked and his urge to ramble nervously faded when he heard the smile in her voice. “I can do that for you,” she said easily.

“You wouldn’t be a—” he started and then tried again. “I just thought…like you said this afternoon. Our kids are friends…and…I thought it might be nice if we could be too.”

There, he thought. That was true.

He heard her smile again. “Of course, we can be friends, Steve,” she said genuinely. “And I’m happy to help you out on Friday.”

Darcy hung up a few minutes later with a stunned smile on her face and the promise of an email with all the details she’d need to be ready for Friday. “Who was that?” Wanda asked, coming into the living room, licking batter from a wooden spoon.

“It was Steve,” she said distractedly, setting her phone aside.

“Steve who?”

“Steve Rogers,” she said patiently.

“Natasha’s dad? That Steve Rogers?”

“Do you know another?”

"What's _Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood's_ first name?"

"Fred," Darcy answered, not pointing out that even if Fred Rogers _hadn't_ been dead for almost twenty years, he still wouldn't have been likely to dial her up.

“Then no,” she shrugged and shook her head, then tilted it to one side. “What did he want?”

“He asked me to come with him to a work party on Friday.”

Wanda’s eyes widened. “Like a _date_?”

“No,” Darcy said immediately. “Just as a friend.”

“Oh,” Wanda eyed her mother knowingly. “Like the kind of _friends_ you two were in high school?”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. Not touching that one. “What happened to your brownies?”

Wanda’s smile fell. “Come try? I think maybe we can salvage them with like, some icing on top? Maybe a caramel drizzle.”

Darcy got to her feet and followed her daughter into the kitchen and dutifully tried one.

It was burnt to a crisp.


	2. Four Weeks Until Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of maneuvering happening in this chapter which maybe makes it not the most interesting, but quite necessary, I'm afraid. Also, a moment borrowed from Golden Girls. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.
> 
> PS: I love you.

The morning after she accompanied him to the school district holiday party, Darcy ran into Steve at the coffee shop she had declared her new favorite back in October.

She didn’t usually go for lattes on the weekend, but she’d forgotten to pick up coffee the night before and had found her canister woefully empty when she’d stumbled into the kitchen half an hour ago. With a strong caffeine headache already brewing, she’d scribbled a note for the kids, thrown a sweatshirt on to hide the fact that she was not wearing a bra, and traded her slippers for sneakers as she grabbed her keys.

There was still one person ahead of her in line when her phone buzzed with a text from Wanda, requesting a peppermint mocha. Two seconds later, she got one from Pietro, asking for a caramel latte. She was tucking her phone back into her sweatshirt pocket when the bell above the door chimed and Steve walked in.

Darcy gulped.

He was sweaty. His cheeks were pink from the cold and whatever he’d been doing to get so sweaty. If she had to guess, she’d say running. Possibly running home from the hours he appeared to have spent at the gym, judging by his clothes.

And the way he…well… _looked_.

She was aware of her bedraggled appearance as soon as he caught her eye and smiled. She was a mess. Last night’s eyeliner had not quite evolved into today’s smokey eye like it was supposed to. Her curls were still crunchy with product and haphazardly pulled back in a low bun, and her leggings weren’t fooling anyone. There was no hiding the fact that she had basically run over here in her pajamas.

Still, Steve’s smile was contagious, and she found she was happy to see him again so soon.

“Hey, I know you,” she said as he crossed the small café to stand in line behind her. She looked at the nearest clock. It was only just seven-thirty. “What are you doing up and out the door so early?”

“I could ask you the same question,” he countered with a smile.

“Out of coffee,” she shrugged before she added, “And early mornings on the weekends are the only time my house is quiet.” She let herself give him a once-over. “Seriously, though, did you run here? Were we not at the same party last night?”

He laughed easily, much more easily than he’d been able to do at the party the night before. Darcy had thought he was joking about the set-ups and the way the women he worked with stressed him out, but he wasn’t. If anything, he’d downplayed the flirting, the touches to his arms and shoulders, the way their friendliness bordered on sexual harassment.

“Jesus Christ, you really _do_ need a bodyguard, don’t you?” she’d muttered after the woman who led the elementary school choir had shamelessly undressed him with her eyes. “Who knew public school teachers were such a thirsty bunch?”

“This is tame,” he’d said, clearly checking the exits. “Trust me.”

She’d gone into work mode and cleared her throat. “Okay, so as inviting as it is to think about just ditching this shindig now that everyone has seen your face and you can legally prove you came, your um,” she coughed again, “lady friend? Dr. Everhart?”

Steve had sighed. “She’s not my lady friend.”

“Okay, well don’t tell her that,” Darcy’d quipped before she went on. “Anyway, she just snagged me at the coat check and asked if we were here together and just _had_ to tell me how great she thought that was and how happy she was to see you out somewhere enjoying yourself.”

“That’s…kind of patronizing,” he muttered.

“Anyway,” she winced. “She _is_ the kids’ principal. And since you being here—even with the hottest chick back in town on your arm—” she’d paused and watched him smile for a second before she continued, “—seems to make her very happy…and since she _did_ recently make a very kind decision not to expel my son, I think maybe we should tough it out for a little while longer, yeah?”

He’d sighed again. “Fine, yeah, that’s…probably a good idea. But if I hear one more veiled mistletoe reference…”

“I got you covered, big guy,” she had assured him easily. “I’m going into active bodyguard duty. Do me a favor and go get us something to drink?”

“Uh—sure,” he’d stammered, looking confused. “Is that…part of your active…bodyguarding?”

She had shooed him toward the bar. “Red wine please.”

She hadn’t had to change much about how she was acting around him when he returned. Just kept her hand tucked in the crook of his arm when he found himself pulled into conversations, laugh extra hard at his jokes, smile up at him adoringly every so often and let her temple rest on his shoulder from time to time.

Simple. Subtle. Just enough of a signal to let the barracudas he worked with know their attention wasn’t appreciated. A signal that shouldn’t be necessary, in the post-Me Too era, she thought more than once with disappointment in these women. But a signal that worked just the same.

Darcy could do fake-dating like a pro. If she was honest, most of the last three years of her marriage had been little more than just that. She was great at it. She could even convince herself if she tried hard enough.

But luckily, with Steve, she didn’t have to try that hard.

“This place is on my way home from the gym,” Steve said, bringing her back into the present and validating her guess from earlier. “I figured I’d stop and bring back breakfast for Nat.” 

Darcy grinned. “What a good dad,” she commented lightly, taking a step toward the counter once the man in front of her cleared out. She turned back to the barista. “I need a decaf peppermint mocha, a decaf caramel latte, and the biggest, most caffeinated vanilla latte you can manage.” 

The barista smiled. “Do you want an extra shot?” 

“I would _love_ an extra shot,” Darcy said seriously. 

From behind her, Steve cleared his throat. “Michelle, can you add a hot chocolate and a banana muffin to that, and I’ll take care of it?” 

The teenager shrugged. “Sure thing, Mr. Rogers.” 

Darcy frowned. “You don’t have to do that,” she said as he stepped up beside her, his credit card already out of his wallet before she even had her purse open. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he waved her away. “I owe you for last night.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Darcy caught the way Michelle’s eyebrows lifted at Steve’s choice of phrase. She watched the girl hand him back his card and turn to make their drinks before she spoke again. “Okay, well _technically_ me going with you was repayment for the initial favor,” she reminded pointedly. “So, you doing something nice this morning just launches us into a whole new round of favors, pal. I sure hope you know what kind of dragon you’re waking up here.” 

He shook his head, another smile tugging at his lips. “Considering I actually enjoyed myself at that party last night for the first time in ten years,” his shoulder moved in a shrug. “I’m willing to risk another round of favors by buy you coffee this morning.” 

“Good,” she said with a nod. “I’m glad. I had fun too.” 

“Ohhh you don’t have to lie,” he admonished with a laugh. “I’m sure it pales in comparison to your fabulous Hollywood parties.” 

“It _did_ ,” she assured him, making him laugh again. “But in a good way. Practically stress free compared to what I’m used to.” Managing Steve’s completely-warranted anxiety was like a vacation when she let herself recall the memory of juggling the needs of six movies stars, all named Chris, all who looked alike, and all of whom starred in the same movie, at an Oscar party two years ago. 

She would take thirty years of faculty Christmas parties if she could be promised she’d never have to live _that_ particular nightmare over again. 

They made small talk while they waited for their orders. By the time she got home and handed out everyone’s drinks, Wanda was awake enough to give her a side eye. “Did something happen?” she asked slowly, taking a cautious sip of her mocha. 

“No,” Darcy said, crossing to the pantry for the bagels. “Was something supposed to happen?” 

“You look weirdly happy for this early on a Saturday.”

Darcy kept the cabinet door open a little longer to hide her smile.

Mondays were always a mess. Something that proved woefully predictable on either coast. She didn’t have time to do much of anything other than play catch up until after five o’clock. By the time she noticed the hour and checked her commute, she could only groan as she called her kids.

“Hey Mom,” Pietro answered on the third ring.

She smiled. “Hey; are you and your sister both at home?”

“Yeah, we’re making dinner.”

Her face folded in confusion. “You’re what?”

“Well, Wanda’s doing most of it—she’s Facetiming with Natasha and they’re making like…fancy mac and cheese with spinach and tomatoes and stuff. It smells really good. But I helped. I chopped the vegetables.”

“Seriously?” she asked, more than a little impressed.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Hey, Wan, Mom doesn’t believe that you’re cooking.”

“I didn’t say that!” she promised when she heard Wanda laughing in the background.

“It’s going to be good, Mom!” Wanda called. “I’m making a ton.”

“Tell Natasha I said thank you,” she said genuinely. “I can’t wait to try it.”

“So what’s up?” Pietro asked. “Are you working late again?”

“No,” she said firmly, turning off her computer as if to prove a point. “I’m packing up to come home right now, actually. I just called to see if you wanted me to order you some dinner, but it seems like you guys have that all handled.”

“Yup,” he said cheerfully. “Totally handled. Just—uh—when you get home, could you like, not come right into the kitchen?” He coughed. “It’s…kind of a war zone. We’ll clean up though,” he went on quickly. “I promise.”

She smiled. “Okay, I will avoid the kitchen until you tell me the coast is clear. Is your homework done?”

“Almost.”

“Mine is!” Wanda called.

“Shut up!” Pietro whined.

“Be sweet,” Darcy reprimanded, on autopilot. “I’m heading out in a few minutes. I should be home in an hour? Maybe a little later, depending on the train.”

“Okay, we’ll save you some food.”

“Thank you baby. I love you.”

“Love you too,” Pietro said, hanging up almost before the words were out of his mouth.

She’d packed up her work bag and purse and was about to shut off her office lamp when there was a knock at the door and Bobbi popped her head in. “Hey,” she said with a bright smile. “Glad I caught you.”

“Almost didn’t,” she said, motioning toward the door her co-worker was blocking. “Can we walk and talk?”

“Sure,” Bobbi said easily and let Darcy fall into step beside her. She had to take two long strides for every step Bobbi took on her criminally long legs. “I just wanted to remind you to bring a date on Friday if you can.”

Darcy stopped and eyed her new colleague warily. “Why?”

Bobbi’s smile was patient. So patient that it might have been condescending on anyone else. “Because it’s Justin Hammer’s Christmas party,” she reminded. As if those words hadn’t been said three hundred times around the office since the event was announced and her attendance was mandated a month ago. “And you’re new.”

“I’ve worked for this company for twelve years,” Darcy reminded her tightly.

“You’re new to him,” Bobbi replied, just as tight. “New means shiny. Means he’ll make an excuse to snag you away to chat one-on-one and trust me,” her smile fell entirely. “You don’t want that. Do yourself a favor and bring a date.”

She felt her lips curl in disgust. “Why do we continue to work with such a lech?”

Bobbi sighed. “Because that lech has won seven Tonys and a Grammy.”

“Oh, well,” Darcy lifted a hand, giving up. “Of course.”

She dropped her head a little closer and lowered her voice. “Between you, me, and the fencepost, he’s headed for several lawsuits for variations on this exact theme. But we can’t drop him as a client until they get their footing…” she shrugged. “Just trying to help you out, Hollywood.”

Darcy sighed. “I appreciate it, Bobbi,” she said, hoping the other woman could tell she meant it. “Thank you. I’ll try and dig somebody up to come with me.”

“If you get desperate,” Bobbi said, heading for the copier in the opposite direction of the bank of elevators, “let me know. I’ll make Lance bring a friend for you.”

Darcy’s smile tightened again. “I’m going to try my best not to get that desperate,” she said honestly.

Bobbi laughed. “Smart woman.”

Steve’s head was starting to hurt when his phone rang that night. He set aside the most recent afront to the Oxford comma and rubbed at his eyes with one hand. His lips twitched into an involuntary smile when he saw the name on the screen. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Darcy greeted cheerfully. “Did you know Natasha taught Wanda how to cook this afternoon?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I saw the whole thing,” he smiled, thinking of how Natasha had secured her phone to the nearest cabinet so Wanda could watch how she prepared everything for the Tuscan penne she loved so much. “Did it turn out okay?”

“Are you kidding me?” Darcy laughed. “It’s delicious! I had three helpings.”

“She’ll be glad to hear it,” he chuckled. From the next room, he heard the sound of the tv shutting off and his daughter getting up from the couch. “So, what’s up?”

“Sorry to just…keep demanding favors of one another,” she said, her tone changing to one a little less relaxed. Steve frowned in concern. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Thirty-eight papers on the Battle of Stalingrad,” he said dryly. “You’re only interruptng my migraine,” he admitted.

“Sounds like a riot,” she said with a smile he could hear. “I won’t keep you from the front lines for too long.”

“No, please,” he assured her. “Talk as long as you like. What’s up? You…need a favor?”

“Yes,” she snapped back to business. “So…we had fun on Friday, right?”

He blinked in surprise. “Yeah,” he said without having to overthink it. Once he had relaxed and stopped feeling like chum in the water, he let himself remember just how much fun Darcy was to be around. They’d spent the evening laughing, playing silly party games and wound up talking to a small group of people he _did_ like until nearly midnight.

“I have a proposition for you,” she said, sounding serious. “To which you do not have to agree, by the way.”

He smiled. “What’s up, Darcy?”

“ _I_ have a Christmas party on Friday,” she said, and if he still knew her as well as he thought he did, he could almost hear the way she scrunched her nose in distaste. “For work. Actually,” she rushed on, “I have three Christmas parties for work between now and the 24th and…I’m new and I don’t want to go by myself and I know you don’t—”

“Sure,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ll go with you.” Because he knew it was hard to be new anywhere and couldn’t imagine how much worse his own holiday work obligation would have been if it’d been a sea of strangers.

Darcy paused. “You don’t have to agree to all three at once,” she said carefully. “You can take it case-by-case.”

He felt his smile broaden. “How about a firm yes for this party and a tentative yes for the other two.”

“You really are the best,” she said quietly, sounding relieved.

“I know,” he joked. _Don’t know how you ever let me go_. The thought flew through his head, unbidden, making him clamp his mouth shut before he could speak the words out loud. “Is this a black-tie event?”

“Don’t break out a tux or anything,” she insisted. “Regular suit is fine. The one next week is the ultra-glam, though.” She smiled. “I can take care of your wardrobe for that, if you want. You’re what, a 44 long these days?”

He blinked. “How did you know that?” 

“It’s part of my job,” she laughed. “But I’ll worry about that next week. This week basic black is fine. I’ll send you the invitation,” she added. “So you can see for yourself.” 

They talked for a few minutes longer before he hung up and picked up where he’d left off in his grading. He paused and cleared his throat. “Wanna come in?”

Immediately, Natasha’s head appeared around the corner of the open office door. “Hey,” she said with an easy smile. “What…brings you here?”

Steve rolled his eyes affectionately. “Was there something you needed? Listening at my door?”

“I wasn’t…y’know… _listening_ listening. I was just…” she shrugged. “In the neighborhood.”

He smothered a smile at her terrible attempt at nonchalance. “And?” he prompted, folding his hands in front of his face to rest his chin against them.

“Was that…Darcy you were talking?” 

“Darcy?” he raised his eyebrows. “Are you on a first name basis?”

“She told me I could call her that,” she shrugged again. “Anyway. Was it?” 

“Yes,” he answered evenly. “She had a favor to ask.”

It was Natasha’s turn to lift her eyebrows. “A favor that involves you going out with her on Friday night?”

“It’s not your concern,” he assured her. “But we’re just friends.” 

“Right,” she conceded, dropping to sit in the armchair in the corner of his office. “But you’re friends who used to date… like, serious-date—” 

“Natasha…”

“And you’re both single now...back in each other’s lives…”

“Did you finish your biology homework?” he asked in a bold attempt to change the subject.

“And have you seen how pretty she is? “ Nat went on, undeterred. “I mean,” she let out an exaggerated low whistle.

“Enough,” Steve laughed, shaking his head. “Finish your homework,” he insisted, pointing back to the living room. “Then find me a date.”

“I’m multi-tasking!” she declared as she got to her feet and retreated.

He waited until he heard her sit back down and turn the TV on before he went back to his students’ papers. But his mind wasn’t on Stalingrad anymore, or even on their astonishingly liberal use of the semicolon. It was on Darcy and the joke he’d almost made. 

_Don’t know how you ever let me go._

Even as a joke, that wasn’t fair. He knew exactly why Darcy had let him go. Because they were kids. 

Because she didn’t have a choice. 

Because he’d told her to.

The venue was trying too hard to be cool. Steve hadn’t thought much about it when Darcy had muttered the words under her breath when they’d arrived, but the longer he stood at the bar, the more time he had to look around, the more he had to agree with her.

There was nothing inherently _wrong_ or out of touch with this yacht club—and not that he’d spent a lot of time in other yacht clubs to be able to compare—but there was something about its bar with exposed brick and hanging Edison bulbs that felt like it was trying to impress the wrong crowd.

The bartender finally noticed him. “Looking to get Hammered?” she asked, looking like she’d rather die than have those words come out of her mouth.

Steve smiled patiently. “For the third time,” he reminded gently, “no.”

“He’s paying us extra if we say that,” she assured him, already quite dead behind the eyes. He made a note to tip more than usual. “What can I get you?”

“Moscow mule and a gin and tonic, please.”

“Do you want that G&T extra fizzy?” she asked reaching for a slim, silver siphon.

Steve frowned. “No,” he said immediately and then added, “uh, thank you.”

He watched her shrug and get to work before he dropped a twenty in her tip jar and leaned against the bar to survey the room. He knew absolutely no one there, with the exception of Darcy, who he couldn’t immediately spot on a first sweep of the room. She’d given him a quick rundown at the beginning, but admitted that most of these people were Broadway people. Producers, directors, a few actors. No one he recognized, no one she would have expected him to.

It was still a little strange to him that the Darcy Lewis he’d grown up with—with her fluffy hair and gap between her front teeth and perpetually ill-fitted glasses—had wound up hobnobbing professionally with so many rich and famous people.

Not that he was surprised at all, as soon as he’d seen her in action. If anything he remembered about her—and it turned out he remembered a _lot_ if his runaway thoughts since Thanksgiving were any indication—it was that she was second to none at working a crowd. She had a pronounced ability to make anyone feel special; she always had. There was something about the way she looked and listened that used to make him feel like he was the only person in the room.

He spotted her finally, in the far corner, when she turned and glanced back over her shoulder. She was looking for him, he realized a second later with a flash of guilt. He turned back to the bartender just as she set his order on the counter. “Thanks,” he nodded and made a beeline for the opposite side of the room, ducking as politely as he could away from someone who smiled at him and started to ask if they’d met.

“There you are,” Darcy said loudly as soon as he was within earshot. Her smile brightened considerably, making him fight a blush with the warmth in her tone. He realized why a second later when a brief scowl crossed the face of the man she’d been talking to. He was shorter than Steve, beady eyes and a look that said he wanted something. On instinct, Steve handed Darcy her mule and let his free hand drop to the small of her back. “Steve, this is Justin Hammer,” she said before she turned back, leaning just slightly into his chest for effect. “Justin, this is Steve Rogers.”

She took his drink without hesitation so he could shake the other man’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” That part was true, at least.

“Of course you have,” Hammer said without missing a beat. He smiled and Steve found himself wondering if anyone ever mistook him as sincere. “You having a good time?” he asked, even as his eyes started to drift back over the crowd. “Of course you are.” He swatted at Steve’s arm before receiving an answer and started to move toward an unaccompanied blonde near the piano. “Excuse me.”

Darcy sighed and sagged against him for a moment before she straightened up and pushed back a glossy curl. “Thank you,” she said once Hammer was out of range.

He smiled and took back his tumbler. “Sorry I took so long,” he said as they clinked glasses. “Didn’t realize you needed a bodyguard too.”

She took a long sip of her drink and shook her head. “Guess we’re just too pretty,” she grinned. “Can’t leave either of us unattended at one of these things.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Good thing I’m here then.”

Darcy smiled again. “It is a good thing,” she said, tilting her head slightly to one side. Steve felt a sudden and unexpected flip in his stomach. Her gaze strayed from his face for a second and her expression dropped. She grabbed his hand. “Come dance with me,” she said quickly. “There are people looking like they are thinking about coming over here to talk to me and I’m rapidly running out of energy to pretend like I want to be here.”

He nodded and set his drink next to hers on the nearest table, allowing her to pull him out onto the dance floor before she had to fake a smile for anyone else. He recognized the song as jazzed up version of “White Christmas” as he fell into an relaxed sway with Darcy.

She moved easily in his arms, her hand in his, the other snaking around to rest on the back of his neck. It was only a few bars into the song that she smiled up at him. “Hey,” she grinned. “You’ve gotten better at this.”

He knew he blushed again when he laughed. “Twenty years is long enough to learn how to slow dance,” he said. “And I wasn’t… _that_ bad the last time we danced, was I?”

Darcy snorted lightly. “I remember a _lot_ of stepped-on toes.”

“I don’t remember that,” he lied.

He didn’t expect the way her expression changed when she looked back up at him. “What do you remember?”

Again, something felt like it stuttered in his chest. “Uh…I remember…playing Seven Minutes in Heaven at Gabe Jones’ house,” he said before he could stop himself. Why had he blurted out _that_ memory? There were at least a thousand other, better memories he could have brought up. Memories that didn’t remind Darcy of how awkward and shy and fumbling he used to be.

Not that it mattered, he reminded himself. Not that he had any reason to make her think otherwise now. Not like he was trying to impress her.

Her face wrinkled in concentration. “Gabe Jones…” she said slowly before her eyes snapped open again. “Wait, are you talking about ninth grade?” she clarified. “When we were playing that stupid game?”

Steve nodded, allowing a smile to pull at his lips. “Yeah, it was like spin the bottle except you were supposed to go in the little closet under Gabe’s basement stairs and make out for seven minutes. Only—”

“Only you were too shy to kiss me,” she finished, smiling fondly. “So, we had like, eight thumb wars instead while we waited for the clock to run out.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, but then you made me put your chapstick on and told everyone what a great kisser I was.”

Her nose wrinkled again. “Oh yeah,” she smiled again. “I didn’t want anyone to make fun of you for chickening out.”

“That was very sweet of you,” he said, as if it had only been a sweet gesture and not the thing that had first made him fall in love with her.

She shook her head. “I was just playing the long game,” she admitted. “I thought if everyone else thought you were as cool as I did, you’d loosen up and want to kiss me the next time we got stuck in a closet together. Which,” she bit her lip and squinted again. “If I recall correctly, was the case.”

“Is that what happened?” he asked, playing dumb. Like he couldn’t recall. Like he didn’t remember how she’d offered her hand to him in the dark closet—Bucky’s house that time, three months later—thumb poised for another battle. And how he’d summoned every drop of courage in his scrawny body and took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers. And how after he’d kissed her—and kissed her and kissed her—she’d pulled back breathlessly and asked if the rule about only getting seven minutes together was one they were allowed to break.

“Hmm, I think so,” she nodded slowly, and he realized she was playing dumb too. She remembered just as well as he did.

The sleepover had been planned long before the invitation to Hammer’s party. Natasha had begged him to still let her stay at Wanda and Pietro’s while he went out with Darcy, and Darcy had assured him she’d have someone hang out with them until she got home.

A swish of movement from one of the upstairs windows drew his eye as they walked slowly up the front walk. Curtains falling back into place too slowly to disguise the three overly-curious faces that had been watching them.

Darcy caught it too and shook her head. “And here I thought midnight was late enough that they’d all be asleep,” she said with an affectionate smile.

They stopped at her front door and she took out her keys. He grinned. “I’m pretty sure they think this was a real date,” he said. “At least, I’m sure Natasha did.”

“Oh,” Darcy nodded. “My kids too. They wanted to make sure I knew how _totally okay_ they were with me starting to date again.” She laughed lightly. “They’re probably assuming some big, sweeping romantic goodnight kiss is happening right now.”

He raised his eyebrows at the thought. “You gonna burst their bubble?” he asked, only half-joking.

Quarter-joking.

Barely joking.

But Darcy laughed again. “I think so,” she said, with something that sounded a little like regret in her voice. “Otherwise, I mean, I’ll have to smudge my lipstick and mess up my hair and…”

He summoned his courage and took in a deep breath. “Or I could just…” Before she could say anything else, Steve leaned in and covered her lips with his.

There was one small second of hesitation, one tiny, smothered sound of surprise muffled between them before Darcy seemed to melt against him and her hands slid up his chest. His hands had dropped to her waist on their own and he pulled her closer without realizing it. That feeling he’d been fighting since he saw her again, like something trying to turn over in his chest, finally caught and when she tilted her head, opening her lips to let him deepen the kiss, Steve felt like someone had restarted his heart. She fit perfectly in his arms, her body molding to his and making him feel like she wanted him to keep going, to run his hands over her curves and press his lips to the pale column of her throat.

But when she took a step back, pulling him with her while her hands stayed laced at the base of his skull, her back hit her front door and the sound made him pause, reminding him where they were. And who was waiting on the other side of that door. He forced his hands to stay anchored on her hips and pulled back from her lips, breaking their kiss but keeping her as close as he could.

She kept her eyes closed for a second longer than he did, blinking things slowly back into focus as if in a daze. “Yeah,” she said after a second, not unwinding her arms from around his neck. “That, um, that would do the trick too.”

He smirked. “Just felt more efficient.”

She blinked again and this time did take a step back. “Is that…is that the only reason you did it?”

“No,” he said, bringing one hand up to hold her cheek. Her skin was warm, her face flushed in the cold. “No, I did that because I really wanted to.” Because now that he had, he couldn't think of a good reason to ever stop again. 

“Good,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “Because I really wanted you to.”

“Good,” he echoed and dropped his head to kiss her a second time. A briefer kiss this time, he felt like he was teasing her when he pulled away with how she stretched her neck up, chasing him. “I should probably go,” he admitted, even though he couldn’t remember the last time he wanted to do anything less.

She nodded and bit her swollen bottom lip. “I know you were going to pick Nat up at eleven,” she said as her nails scratched lightly at his hair just above his neck. It felt too good, he wanted to close his eyes and lean harder into her touch. “But maybe you could come over for breakfast instead?”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Me too,” she whispered before she pulled him down for one last kiss. Her nose brushed his when she pulled back just enough to whisper a good night against his lips.

And then she slipped inside her house, leaving Steve standing on the front porch, grinning like an idiot.


	3. Three Weeks Until Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So to some of you, this may be a disappointment, because I promised smut in the next chapter. But this one got away from me to the point where it became it's own thing and now there's an extra chapter in this saga that I'm desperately trying to get finished before Christmas. 
> 
> HUGEST of huge thanks to @miss_elizabeth and @girlinthecorner for their assistance in helping this gentile gal inject some realism into Darcy's Hanukkah celebrations.

Darcy worked from home on Tuesday. She normally wouldn’t have with so much happening at the office, but there were extenuating circumstances.

It was the first night of Hanukkah.

Her children had invited Natasha and Steve to join them.

And her house was trashed.

In between her usual frenzy of emails, phone calls, and two conference calls that _could_ have been emails, Darcy met her grocery delivery on the porch and cleaned the downstairs. The downstairs was all she could manage by the time she had to start prepping for dinner. If it was just going to be the three of them, she wouldn’t have bothered more than a basic straightening up of the debris from Hurricane Pietro and Tropical Storm Wanda, but she’d been to Steve’s house three times now. And it was _clean_.

It appeared that he and Natasha just didn’t make messes. Or, if they did, they were the type to clean them up immediately and leave no trace they’d ever been there.

Absolutely unheard of in her house, a place where Pietro had once left his dirty socks in the middle of the living room for so long that they turned into a landmark.

So she cleaned the downstairs because she didn’t want Steve to know exactly how messy she was—even though he likely already did and didn’t seem to mind. The upstairs was another monster entirely and definitely wasn’t going to be checked off the to-do list on a workday. If her kids didn’t care if Natasha hung out in their messy rooms, she didn’t care either. And it wasn’t like Steve was going to have any reason to go upstairs while they were over.

Darcy didn’t have time to think about Steve seeing the upstairs of her house. And all the things that simple idea would imply. She had things to do. Things that did not involve standing still in the center of her living room with a stupid smile on her face like what tended to happen when she let her thoughts wander back to Steve. And the way he’d kissed her on Friday night—slow and hungry and familiar and new all at the same time. Or the way he’d kissed her on Saturday morning when he’d come for breakfast and to take Natasha home—just a quick handful of kisses, traded back and forth like guilty teenagers while they waited for the kids to say their goodbyes. Each one filling her with a rush of excitement that bubbled like champagne in her chest.

She knew they weren’t fooling anyone. All three of their children had already decided they were dating before they did, even if they hadn’t said anything.

Is that what they were doing? Were they _dating_ again? She didn’t know; she didn’t want to ask and burst this giddy, flushed little bubble they’d found themselves in. They were adults now, she reminded herself, they didn’t need to put a label on absolutely everything right away.

Pietro dropped his backpack on the ground, a look of disgust on his face as soon as his eyes fell to the table and the menorahs Darcy had dug out of the attic. “Mom, come on,” he said seriously, trailed by his sister into the kitchen. He sat on one of the stools at the counter and put his hands together, looking ready to negotiate. “You can’t be serious.”

Darcy looked up from scrubbing the sink full of potatoes. “About what?”

“You can’t seriously keep making us use the menorahs we made when we were like, _six years old_ ,” he exclaimed, throwing his head back dramatically. “They look like they were made by babies.”

“They _were_ made by babies,” Darcy reminded him as Wanda joined him at the counter. She turned off the water and crossed the kitchen to the pantry, stopping to push his hair back and tilt his face up so she could kiss his forehead before she did the same to Wanda. “They were made by _my_ babies and I love them, and I’ll use them every year until I die, thank you.”

Wanda wrinkled her nose. “They don’t really go with the aesthetic anymore.”

Darcy snorted. “Once you’re grown up and in your own place you can buy all the handblown glass and artisanal tarnished silver menorahs you want,” she assured them, continuing on to the pantry for the flour. “But for now, your gold-painted and glittery rigatoni has stood the test of time and I see no reason why I shouldn’t get another year of showing off how incredibly,” she stopped on her way back to the sink, bag of flour in hand, and kissed Wanda again, and the Pietro, alternating between them with each word. “Talented my kids were.”

“Okay, okay!” Pietro exclaimed, laughing as he wriggled away from her. “Fine! Do whatever you want, crazy lady!”

“Can I make the sufganiyot?” Wanda asked once Darcy had returned to her cook space.

“No,” Darcy answered immediately with a laugh. “Absolutely not.”

Her face wrinkled. “Are you still mad about the grease fire?”

“Mad? No. Using it as firm reasoning behind my decision? Yes.”

“Mom, that was like, two years ago and it was mostly Pietro’s fault!”

“No it wasn’t!” he exclaimed indignantly. “You’re the one who tried to put it out with water!”

“You _told_ me to!”

“I didn’t know there was _different kinds of fire!”_

“Oh my God, enough!” Darcy cried. “Unless someone goes to pastry school in this house, we’re never trying to make homemade donuts ever again, understood?” They nodded, eyeing each other resentfully. “And it’s a moot point for tonight anyway because I already bought some.”

“Did you get them from Christi—” Wanda frowned. “Christone’s? Christine’s?” She stopped. “What’s the place you used to go after school and get cookies from?”

Darcy smiled. “Christeone’s,” she corrected gently. “And no, they’re from Steinberg’s, just up the street.”

“Are you going to take us to Christeone’s?” Pietro asked. “You said you would.”

“I know,” she sighed. “Maybe when you’re off at the end of the month,” she suggested, hoping they weren’t holding her busy work schedule against her. “I’ll take the day off and we can go make ourselves sick on almond cookies and cannoli.”

Wanda smiled and reached slyly for the bag on the counter where the chocolate gelt was hiding. Before Darcy could tell her not to steal too many, Pietro’s phone lit up with an incoming video call from their father.

“Happy Hanukkah!” Erik and Charles cried in unison when Pietro answered.

Darcy smiled faintly, watching how her twins lit up with bright smiles as they echoed back their greetings before they launched into talking over each other to fill Erik in on everything that had happened since they’d last spoken a few days ago.

“Did you know Mom has a _boyfriend_?” Wanda asked in the midst of the first wave of excited chatter.

She felt a strange rush of panic seize her and she raised her voice. “Hey, you two, there’s a package from your dad up on my dresser,” she said suddenly. “Go and get it, you can open your presents while you have him on the phone.”

Predictably, they bolted for the stairs, leaving the phone practically spinning on the counter, free for her to pick up. Her heart squeezed at the sight of her ex-husband—golden tan and handsome as ever, sitting squished on a loveseat with Charles whose long brown hair flopped roguishly into his eyes. They were a ridiculously attractive couple.

“Presents,” she said, holding the phone at eye level and treating neither of them to a view of her cleavage, “that you definitely said you weren’t going to go overboard with.”

“What’s this about a boyfriend?” Erik asked, avoiding her accusation of his overspending. “What’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” she said easily, leaning back against the counter. “At least nothing I want to talk to you two about.”

“Oh, come on,” Charles pouted, and Darcy laughed, trying not to remember how much simpler her life had been when he had been her best friend too. When she thought she could ignore what was going on with him and Erik if it meant everything staying nice and steady and she didn’t have to give up either of them. “At least tell us his name.”

She sighed. “His name is Steve, we used to date back in high school—”

“High school Steve?” Erik repeated, looking concerned. “Army boy who broke your heart? That Steve?”

Her eyes nearly rolled on their own. “I’ve only ever dated one Steve,” she reminded before she offered a bold lie. “And he didn’t break my heart.”

Her ex-husband looked confused. “But this is the right guy I’m thinking of, right? You had all these plans and then he blew you off last minute to join the Army instead of going to college with you?”

To his right Charles raised an eyebrow. “You couldn’t remember her birthday, but you remember all that?”

“Thank you, Charles,” Darcy quipped dryly. “My thoughts exactly. He didn’t _blow me off_ ,” she went on, even though it was so far beyond Erik’s business at this point. “His mom died like, three weeks before graduation and he had to go into the Army to be able to afford to go to school. _Anyway_ ,” she cleared her throat. “We used to date and now we kind of are again and that’s really all I want to say about it because if I tell you any more I might jinx it.”

“What’s there to jinx?” Erik scoffed. “He’s an idiot if he’s not still head over heels in love with you.”

She frowned, considering the source, and cocked her head upward. “Kids’ll be back down in a minute,” she said. “Do me a favor and don’t act interested in my dating life if they bring it up again, alright?”

They agreed, Darcy handed the phone back to Pietro when he and Wanda returned to the kitchen, clutching the gifts their father had sent them.

The night went too fast, just like most of the days and nights in December. One minute she was welcoming Steve and Natasha at the front door and the next, the candles of the menorahs had been lit, the last _Amein_ echoed of the blessings, and the latkes had been served.

A dinner for five with good-natured squabbling about applesauce or sour cream and way too many chocolate coins and jelly donuts later and Darcy couldn’t remember what she’d been so nervous about.

It hadn’t been the bad kind of nervous, she reminded herself once they started cleaning up and the kids retreated upstairs. It was the good kind of nervous. The excited kind.

The kind she was feeling right now, she realized once the downstairs was finally quiet and she and Steve found themselves alone in her kitchen.

“This was really nice,” he said, scraping what was left of a plate into the trash before he looked up with a smile. “I thought you said you couldn’t cook.”

She grinned. “This is one of maybe ten things I can make without screwing it up,” she admitted. “If you think I’m hiding some secret culinary skill that I’m planning on wowing you with later,” she shook her head. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

With her back turned back to him while she ran hot water over the pan soaking in the sink, Darcy didn’t hear him set the plates down and cross the kitchen to stand behind her. She didn’t notice his presence until he reached over her shoulder and turned the water off before his hands went to her hips and he gently turned her around to face him.

He smelled too good to be standing this close to her. Like clean laundry and something woodsy that made her want to press her nose to his neck and take deep breaths, holding whatever that scent was deep inside her lungs. She smothered that urge and settled for letting her hands rest on his chest, her fingers over the buttons of the dark blue shirt he was wearing. The sleeves were cuffed near his elbows, showing off the subtle dip and planes of muscles in his forearms. And his hands were still on her hips, keeping her in place between him and the counter. She wasn’t going to complain.

“I’m not disappointed,” he said softly.

She felt her pulse skip a few beats. It was hard to breathe with him this close. “I do have, um, other skills,” she managed a teasing smile, curling her fingers so her nails dragged a little across his chest. “That I’ve picked up in the last twenty years.”

He smiled back, his lips sliding upward in a smirk. “That right?”

“Skills that more than make up for my lack of culinary prowess,” she went on, joking quietly.

He chuckled and flexed his hands at her sides, maintaining his possessive grip. “Such as?”

“Needlepoint?” she suggested, switching to another joke when she realized that everything she _wanted_ to say was going to make her blush like a virgin. To her relief, Steve laughed, urging her to continue. “I’m also great at playlists,” she said, maintaining her straight face. “And parallel parking. Just to name a few.”

“Be still my heart,” he murmured as he brought one hand up to pull her face to his in a slow, sweet kiss.

At least, that’s how it started. The second Steve’s hand slid to flatten over the small of her back, Darcy felt her knees weaken. Her lips parted for him, welcoming the way he pulled her closer and deepened their kiss with a faint sound from his throat that went straight through her. She let her fingers curl against the fabric of his shirt again, greedily running over his chest and up over his shoulders while he stroked his tongue over hers.

She had missed this. She’d been lying to herself, pretending she’d forgotten how good it felt to kiss Steve Rogers, but that was all it was. A lie. She’d never once forgotten how it felt to have his arms around her, to be kissed like she was something warm and delicious, like he’d never get enough of her. If she was telling the truth, she would have to admit that she’d been chasing this feeling—this high—since she was seventeen years old. Looking for someone who made her feel this good with something as simple as a kiss.

Steve had backed her up into the edge of the counter, the hand that had been at her back slid lower to squeeze her ass. She shifted so his thigh could slot between hers and she couldn’t help but roll her hips, relishing in the soft, barely audible way he groaned again.

“Mom, can you—”

At the sound of Wanda’s voice, they snapped apart, Steve pushing himself away from her and crashing his hip into the island while Darcy clapped a hand over her mouth and found her daughter staring at her in the doorway of the kitchen.

Wanda’s eyes were wide. Her mouth hung open.

“What—um—” Darcy could feel her face burning as she straightened up and adjusted her shirt. “What did you need, honey?”

“Uh…” The edge of Wanda’s open mouth pulled upward. “Nothing,” she said finally. “I don’t…um.” The smirk turned quickly into a full smile. “I don’t need anything.”

Darcy was pretty sure she was sweating. “You sure?”

“Nope,” Wanda said, her eyes dancing from her mother to Steve and back again. “I don’t need anything and I didn’t—uh—see anything either…if you…um…were,” she coughed, “ _doing_ something that you didn’t want anyone else to see.”

“Wanda—”

The twelve-year-old started to back away, her hands held up in defense. “I’m just gonna…” she grinned widely. “Go back upstairs and uh—” she coughed again. “Definitely not say anything to anyone else.”

Wanda darted away before anyone could say another word. Darcy heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and the sound of a bedroom door squealing before she let out the breath she’d been holding. “Oh my God,” she moaned, dropping her still-burning face into her hands.

To her surprise, she heard Steve chuckling lightly. When she looked up through her fingers, he was leaning against one hand on the island, shaking his head.

He met her eyes and took a few steps back to pull her hands gently from her face. She looked up and her nose wrinkled. “Guess we’re busted, huh?”

Steve was still laughing as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in against his chest. He kissed the top of her head. “Pretty sure we were busted a while ago.”

***

The plan had not been to spend most of the week with Steve, but by the time Thursday rolled around and she found herself sharing a plate of charcuterie with him while their kids dipped in and out of shops on Montague Street, she figured it couldn’t hurt to admit she was enjoying herself.

“Thanks for chaperoning this little trip,” she said, reaching for a slice of baguette to pair with a slice of thin prosciutto. Beneath the table, her ankle brushed his as she crossed her legs. “You didn’t have to.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I needed to get some shopping done anyway.”

She popped the baguette into her mouth and chewed happily. “So do the kids,” she said once she’d swallowed. “Or so they tell me,” her shoulder moved in a shrug. “I don’t know who they’re shopping for. Mm,” she licked her lips. “Maybe their dad. His birthday is at the end of the month and they’ll be back with him by then.” She frowned. “I should get him something. Or maybe I just send a card? I don’t know how that works anymore.”

When she looked up from her own commentary, Steve was watching her, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Your kids are going back to California?”

She nodded, trying to suppress the wave of panic and heartsick that tended to sweep over her when she thought about them being that far away from her. “Yeah, just for a week. Erik and Charles are going to come here for Passover and I guess we’ll figure out what’s going to happen over summer vacation but—” she shook her head. “One incredibly functional modern family moment at a time.”

“Sounds like it,” Steve commented, looking halfway between impressed and curious. “You guys still get along?”

She shrugged again. “What was I going to do? Hate him for being himself?” she shook her head. “No, I couldn’t do that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it took me a second to get to that point. I went through this whole, self-absorbed, how-could-you-do-this-to-me, sad, ragey phase when he told me he was in love with Charles but after I thought about it for more than a second it was pretty obvious that had been the case the whole time.”

“Still doesn’t sound like a walk in the park,” he said quietly, stopping when they both reached for the knife stuck in the little wedge of brie.

“There are worse things,” she replied evenly, telling herself she wasn’t going to push for details about what had happened to his wife. All she knew was what Wanda had told her—that Natasha’s mother had died when she was very little and that Steve hardly ever talked about her, even now.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I guess there are.”

In her pocket, Darcy’s phone buzzed and she took it out with a quick guilty look shot in Steve’s direction. “Sorry,” she whispered. “It’s Wanda.”

“You’re fine,” he promised, his smile returning.

“What’s up, kiddo?” she asked, putting the phone to her ear.

“Uh, kind of a girl emergency,” Wanda said without a greeting before she rushed on. “Nobody needs a pad or anything. But we’re just at the thrift store next to you guys. Can you come over?”

“Uh, sure,” she said slowly. “Where is your brother?”

“He’s here too. He’s looking at—” she stopped abruptly. “Um. Nevermind. He’s not looking at anything. I guess.”

Darcy sighed, deciding she didn’t want to know what her daughter had just lied about. There was only so much trouble Pietro could get into in a thrift shop that didn’t sell military equipment. “Okay, I’ll be there soon.”

“Oh!” Wanda’s exclamation stopped her. “But can it just be you? Nat wants your opinion on a gift for her dad.”

She smiled. “Sure,” she said. “No problem.” Her phone was tucked away before she looked up again. “I guess there’s a girl emergency,” she relayed the initial request.

Steve winced. “Sounds serious.”

“Don’t order dessert without me?” she asked hopefully as she got to her feet. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

He grinned. “I won’t,” he assured her. “But I can’t promise I won’t finish this board by myself.”

She bit her lip and surveyed what was left before she picked up another slice of bread, a disc of salami, and an olive. “It’s all you,” she said, happy when he looked up so she could drop a kiss to his lips. “I’ll be quick.”

“I’ll be here.”

Pietro was sitting quietly by himself in the front of the store, a coffee-table book, yellowed with age spread out on his lap. He looked up when Darcy opened the door. “Hey Mom. Do you know who Helmut Newton is?”

She stopped, mid-scan of the store and looked at her son. “You’re reading a book about Helmut Newton?”

He wrinkled his face and turned the page, no longer giving her his attention. “I don’t think it’s _about_ him. It’s just like…a lot of naked people.”

Darcy pursed her lips, trying not to laugh at the way his expression changed when he looked at the next photo. “Yeah that’s what he liked to photograph. Where are the girls?”

He still didn’t look up, but waved in the direction of the opposite corner of the store. “They’re trying on Snowball dresses. This isn’t _porn_ though, right?” He squinted and brought his face closer to the page. “I mean. They wouldn’t let a kid just buy it if it was real porn. Would they?”

She smothered her smile even harder. “Did you already buy that book?”

“No, but I’m gonna.”

“Okay,” she held up a hand. “Just do me a favor and stay here, please.” Wanda and Natasha were close enough to where Pietro had indicated. They were standing close together, their heads bent over Wanda’s phone, giggling and leaning against one another like sisters. When they noticed Darcy’s approach, Natasha looked up with her cheeks a pleasant shade of pink. “I’m here,” Darcy held out her hands. “How can I help?”

“Okay, so first thing,” Wanda said, taking charge as she put her phone away. “Nat, show her the prints you found.”

Natasha looked a little shy again as she shuffled a few bags in her hand and pulled out three shrink-wrapped 11x17 reprints of World War II propaganda posters. “I have these wooden frames I’m going to paint so they go with his office,” she said quietly, watching while Darcy spread them out on top of the nearest rack so she could see them all at once. “But he has this big empty space on one wall, and I thought these might—” she shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you think he’ll like them?”

Darcy smiled as she looked from one brightly colored print to the other. “Are you kidding me?” she scoffed. “ _That_ nerd?” she jerked a thumb in the direction of the restaurant, making both girls giggle again. “He’s going to love these, sweetie. They’re beautiful.”

“You think so?” she asked hopefully.

Darcy handed them back carefully. “Something that thoughtful _and_ in a frame you’re going to paint yourself?” she shook her head. “Slam dunk. I bet you a dollar he cries when he opens them.”

Natasha laughed softly as she placed the prints back in their bag. “I hope you’re right.”

“Okay, next thing,” Wanda said before she turned behind her and picked up two dresses. “Can I get one of these please?”

Darcy narrowed her eyes at the hem of one and the neckline of the other. “That one is too short,” she said firmly, pointing to the one on the right. “Try the other one and let me see it.”

Wanda didn’t fight her on the minidress and disappeared back into the dressing room. “Did Wanda tell you Sam asked her to go with him?” Natasha asked once they were alone. Suddenly her face dropped again. "Cause if she didn't, then pretend I didn't say anything. Sorry," she winced. "I should have asked her first." 

“She told me,” Darcy looked over with a smile as Natasha let out a breath of relief. Sam had texted Wanda on Tuesday night to wish her a happy Hanukkah and ask if she’d go to ‘that stupid school dance’ with him. Beside her, Natasha fidgeted in place. “You know you don’t need a date to go to a dance, right?”

“No, it’s not that,” she wet her lips and glanced down. “Um. Someone asked me but I don’t…” she frowned. “I don’t think my dad’s going to let me go.”

Darcy raised her eyebrows. “Did you ask him?”

“No,” she shook her head. “But you know how he is,” she muttered. “I don’t know. He still treats me like I’m a little kid sometimes and I know if I told him that Clint asked me that he’d get all weird and say I couldn’t go so…”

“So you’re just not going to say anything?” she finished for her. Natasha shrugged. “Well, honey, that’s not fair to your dad. You didn’t even give him a chance to say yes.” She waited another second. “Do you _want_ to go to the dance with Clint?”

Natasha pursed her lips and her cheeks turned pink again. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I think it’d be fun.”

“It _will_ be fun,” Darcy laughed lightly. “I know Wanda’s going to make Pietro go too,” she said encouragingly. “I bet your dad would be a lot easier to convince if you were all going in a little group together, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha muttered, but Darcy could see she was starting to warm to the idea. “Maybe.” After another beat, she bit her lip and looked up, suddenly shy again. “They have this dress here, actually,” she moved over the pile of clothes Wanda had been trying on and picked up a dress made of dark green velvet. Simple, knee-length and long-sleeved and so 90’s it made Darcy want to weep. But when Natasha held it up to herself, the color made her green eyes sparkle and her red braid popped against the fabric. “It’s really cheap,” she went on. “I have enough from my babysitting, I wouldn’t even have to ask him to buy it for me.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Darcy said sincerely. “You’re going to be stunning. And,” she reached out to tuck a stray lock of hair that had come loose from Natasha’s braid back behind her ear. “Depending on what size shoe you wear, I might be able to loan you a pair of heels that would match that dress perfectly.”

“I think these are an eight?” she guessed, glancing down at her boots.

“Perfect,” Darcy said and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. If it had been her own kid, there would have been at least two hugs by now. But Natasha was reserved with her affection, even with Steve. “Consider your loan secured. Just do me a favor and when you tell your dad about the dance?” she suggested. “Lead with how excited you are. He’s a pretty tough guy but I can’t see how he could say no to that.”

“Thank you, Darcy,” Natasha said softly. “I—um—” she paused and then shook her head. “Just thanks.”

She smiled. “Anytime, sweetheart.”

Wanda’s second choice in dresses was also too skimpy for a seventh-grade dance. Darcy waited, skimming the racks while she tried on a third option and Natasha paid for her own dress. Her hands flipped through the nearest carousel, eyeing and dismissing one thick knit sweater after another until something marvelously horrible caught her eye.

Steve was right where she’d left him, though he’d ordered a glass of wine in her absence. He eyed her a little warily as she sat back down across from him. “What are you grinning about?” he asked, even as a little half-smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“I got you a present,” she said simply and handed him the shopping bag she’d returned with.

“Why…?” he accepted it cautiously, like she might have just handed him a bomb.

“First and foremost, because I’m the _best,”_ she emphasized with a cheeky grin. “And secondly, because I have my suspicions that you don’t have anything to wear to this upcoming party I’m dragging you to.”

He blinked and looked up. “I thought you said it was black-tie.”

“Oh, _tomorrow_ ’s event is black-tie,” she confirmed before her lips dropped into a thoughtful frown. “Did they drop your suit off?”

“They did,” he assured her before he looked back down. “So, what is this for?”

“This is for the week after,” she smiled wide again. “The informal Stark Agencies holiday bash—there’s an ugly sweater requirement.”

Steve groaned. “And you’re telling me that,” he lightly gripped the sides of the bag in his lap, “you bought me—”

“The absolute ugliest sweater I’ve ever seen.” She dropped her chin onto the heel of her hand and bit her lip, watching him squirm. “I think you’re going to hate it,” she added gleefully.

He sighed and shook his head. “Okay, let’s rip this band-aid off.” He pulled the blue and white sweater from the bag and unfolded it to hold it out. “Oh boy,” he muttered, staring at it as if unsure where to look first. She didn’t blame him. From the repeating pattern of white Stars of David and knitted dreidels, to the massive golden menorah in the center of the sweater, to the words ‘Too Lit to Quit’ stitched beneath it, there was a lot going on.

“And the best part?” Darcy leaned across the table and slipped her hand under the bottom hem, finding the little battery pack. “It lights up!” She flicked it on, adding to Steve’s horror, and illuminated the nine little bulbs on the candle wicks. He kept staring until she laughed. “Do you hate it?”

He looked up finally, fighting another smile. “I do,” he nodded. “I really hate it.” He turned the lights of the sweater off and folded it neatly to place back in the bag before he leaned across the table and kissed her. “Thank you.”


	4. Still Three Weeks Before Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, hi. This is a lot. 
> 
> But I've also been going through a lot? And feeling kind of...invisible and unloved? So even if it's not great, if someone could just pet my hair and tell my I'm good, I think I really need that right now. 
> 
> I love you guys.
> 
> (Also, all three cute kid stories are from the comedy stylings of my own personal niece)

Chapter Four

(Still Three Weeks Until Christmas)

Darcy wasn’t thinking about the snow as it started to fall on Friday night. She was thinking about her kids and the fact that she was leaving them by themselves for most of the night. She was thinking about the dress she’d rented that would cost more than a few mortgage payments if she spilled anything on it. Long sleeved and cut just above the knee, made entirely of golden sequins. She felt like she belonged on the top of a Christmas tree.

And mostly, she was thinking that Steve Rogers looked so good in a tux it was a crime and a shame he didn’t have to wear one every single day.

Her hand fit easily in his as he handed his keys to the valet outside the hotel. He glanced back over his shoulder to watch the kid in the red vest duck into the driver’s seat and shook his head. “I’m surprised he didn’t ask if he could dispose of it for me,” he muttered.

Darcy snorted. “There’s nothing wrong with your car,” she laughed.

“I know,” he assured her. “But there probably aren’t a lot of Toyotas in the valet lot tonight.”

“Probably not,” she agreed amiably, pleased when he squeezed her hand as the concierge pulled open the heavy doors and welcomed them inside. “I wouldn’t trust that most of the people I work with know how to drive.”

Steve laughed. He followed her to the coat check and handed over their winter coats, tucking the ticket into his pocket before he turned back to her. “So what kind of breed of rich people are we schmoozing tonight?”

“The _worst_ kind,” she assured him with a rueful smile. “I think my boss might actually have flown in from—”

“Is that my golden goose?” the rich baritone voice of Tony Stark sailed through the hotel lobby.

Darcy closed her eyes. “Aaand here it is,” she said under her breath as she heard him approach. She smiled up at Steve. “Bright and shiny?”

“The brightest and shiniest,” he assured her with a smile she wanted to kiss off his lips.

She turned around just as Tony approached. He was only a few inches taller than she was and impeccably dressed in Tom Ford. His goatee was still groomed to its ridiculous specifications and he smelled like money when he took her by the hands. “You, Ms. Lewis,” he said, leaning in to kiss one cheek, and then the other, “look amazing.” He pulled back, looking genuinely impressed. “I thought you’d be begging me to go back west, but this side of the country appears to be working for you.”

She smiled, relaxing just a little bit. She really did like Tony. He’d been the one to hire her when she was barely qualified, taking a chance on her because he liked how she talked to people. He could be insufferable, and his ego was second to none, even in show business, but he’d also given her four months of paid time off when the twins were born. He’d let her slide a few clients around when she was getting divorced; and he’d granted her transfer when she asked for it, no questions asked. Most of that, she knew, was because she was one of his best employees. His golden goose, as he lovingly referred to her. He was too good a businessman to know that you didn’t kill the golden goose. But part of it was that he was a genuinely good guy underneath all the pomp.

Tony introduced himself to Steve and within seconds had done that thing where he’d found something they had in common. In this case, it was that Tony’s father, Howard Stark, had attended the high school where Steve taught. The topic had turned to old Brooklyn and what pillars of the borough were still around when Tony’s statuesque wife appeared at his side. Pepper was always gorgeous—unfairly so when one considered she was a CFO on top of looking like a supermodel—but in a backless dress of silver and navy blue that looked like liquid starlight and her red hair in a waterfall of curls over her shoulder, she was stunning.

She pulled Tony away after a few minutes of friendly catch-up and informed Darcy that the party was in the main ballroom. And with that, they were gone, and Darcy was free to lace her fingers with Steve’s and pull him along to another party.

Darcy still wasn’t thinking about the snow much later on, when she and Steve found themselves tucked away on a little settee in a back corner of the ballroom. The band was still playing, the drinks were still flowing, and most everyone was still dancing and mingling. But it was nearly eleven and Darcy’d had more than enough socializing for one night and Steve had not fought her when she’d led him over to sit down so she could give her feet a rest.

He’d brought them each a fresh drink and then sat down a little too far away for Darcy’s liking. It bothered her for about ten seconds before he handed her his drink to hold for the time it took him to bend and grab hold of her ankles, pulling her aching feet up and into his lap. The pressure disappeared from the balls of her feet and her little toes instantly and she had to bite back a sigh of relief.

“That better?” he asked, taking his gin and tonic back while his other hand dropped down to rest on her ankles.

She nodded and let her cheek rest against the dusky rose-colored velvet of the sofa. “Thank you,” she exhaled.

Steve surveyed the room, taking in another glance of all the glitz and glamour. He smiled when he looked back at her. “You know, I was expecting this to be a lot worse.”

She returned his smile. “Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, honestly.” Her lips dipped. “Last year was a lot worse.” When he raised his eyebrows in a question, she went on. “I thought it wouldn’t be so bad to be dateless to a Christmas party for the first time in fifteen years.” She let out a joyless chuckle. “I was wrong.”

He smiled sympathetically and his thumb absently stroked the top of her foot. “I’m on the other side of that,” he admitted. “Before you came with me to that work party, I don’t remember the last time I had a date.”

Darcy sipped her champagne and studied him closely. “That’s not true,” she said quietly.

Steve looked up, surprised for a second before he glanced back down at her feet. “Uh, no,” he said and shook his head. “No, you’re right. That’s not true.”

“When was it?” she asked gently, even though she was pretty sure she already knew.

“Last real date?” he asked. “Not a first date that was doomed to go nowhere?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Last real date.”

His chest lifted and fell again with a heavy breath. “Would’ve been…nine…maybe ten years ago?”

“Your wife?” she asked, keeping her voice low enough that no one nearby would hear them. When he nodded, she went on. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t—”

“No,” he shook his head but didn’t look up. “No, I want to tell you. I don’t want there to be this big,” the hand holding his drink made a motion between them, “off-limits topic between us.”

When he didn’t immediately jump to continue, Darcy bit her lip. “Natasha was only three when she…”

He nodded. “Yeah. But Sharon was sick Nat’s whole life.”

“Oh,” the word fell from her lips before she could stop it. “I guess I thought—since she was so young—”

“No, she had a brain tumor,” he said. “It would have been treatable but they—uh—they found it when she was pregnant, and she wouldn’t let them start chemo until Natasha was born.”

Darcy felt like someone had kicked her in the chest. “She didn’t want to risk her baby,” she said softly. An unfair and horrible choice to have to make and Darcy knew she would have done the same thing.

Steve shook his head again. “We’d—uh—she’d had two miscarriages before and she—” his jaw clenched for a second before he exhaled. “She wouldn’t even consider it.” He coughed lightly. “They tried to treat as aggressively as they could after but, uh…” His sentence trailed off with a roll of his shoulder. “Only so much they could do.”

Darcy let out the breath she’d been holding. “Fuck,” she said quietly and shook her head. “That’s…yeah, they need a better word for how unfair that is.”

He looked up again and managed another shrug. “Well. We all got somethin’ right? Not like I have a patent on sob stories.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Can you imagine if you _did_?” To her relief he smiled back, the ghosts that had been dancing between them fading from his eyes. “Do me a favor,” she said, keeping her tone a little lighter. “Tell me something unbearably cute that Natasha used to do when she was little.”

Her suggestion worked and he lit up with a memory. “Uh, when she was about four? And she wanted me to take a picture of her, she used to say, ‘Cheese me with the camera, Daddy’.”

Darcy smiled broadly, her heart melting at the thought of how cute Natasha must have been when she was that little. She was only just starting to grow out of her chubby cheeks and into her nose and lips. “I love that,” she said, happy she’d asked.

“Your turn,” he countered. “Tell me something cute your kids used to do.”

She giggled. “Well, when they were about six, Pietro tried to blame everything he broke on gang violence.” Steve snorted, urging her to continue. “Which, given that we lived in Santa Barbara, wasn’t as solid of a cover as he probably thought it was from what he’d see on the news.”

“Hey, there could have been some yuppy gangs wandering around,” Steve offered with a smile. “Breaking lamps and little kids’ toys in the area.”

“Even if there were,” she laughed, “I doubt they would have left a post-it note with the words ‘The Blood Gang’ on it, like he did.” She shook her head at the memory. “Erik was worried it meant he was going to grow up to be a cop.”

Steve chuckled. “I don’t blame him,” he admitted. “I would’ve worried about the same thing. What about Wanda?”

“Hmm,” she tilted her head in thought before something stood out in all the millions of times her kids were too cute or funny for words. “She used to be obsessed with Mexican food when she was really little. Like, two or three? I mean,” she shrugged, “she’d still rather eat tacos than anything else, but it used to be the only thing that would make her happy.” Steve’s smile kept her talking. “The Hanukkah the kids were…maybe…two? I think? Maybe three at the most. She brought me her little bag of chocolate gelt and goes, ‘Mommy, this is money, right?’ And I said, y’know, ‘Yeah, baby girl, that’s money.’ And she puts it in my hand and closes my fingers around it and whispers, ‘Let’s get out of here and get some quesadillas.’’

Steve broke into a loud, infectious laugh that made her stomach flip. “Did you take her to get quesadillas?”

“I did!” she giggled. “Like I could turn down that invitation.”

He grinned and held his glass out to her. “Here’s to three cute kids.”

She clinked her flute to his and sipped, letting her eyes drift over to the front door where a small crowd was making their way back inside. They were soaked, fat drops of snow stuck in a woman’s hair, another man had clumps of wet snow clinging to his shoulders. There was melting snow sliding off of high heels and onto the glossy floor. Darcy’s easy smile fell from her lips. “Jesus, is the snow that bad?”

Steve frowned and looked behind him, seeing the same thing she did. “I don’t know…” he said under his breath. She took her feet from his lap so he could stand up and offer her his hand. “Let’s go see.”

It was, in fact, that bad. In the hours since they’d been outside the snow, which had started as an innocuous dusting of sparkly white flakes, had turned into a genuine blizzard. At least six inches had fallen as the temperature kept dropping, freezing what had already stuck to the street and turning the roads and bridges into a nightmare.

“Shit,” Darcy muttered, digging in her clutch for her phone.

Steve’s hand was on her back again, right at the base of her spine, as they moved aside for people coming in, complaining about the sudden shift in the weather. “It’s okay,” he said calmly. “I can drive in this. I’ve driven in worse.”

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing between him and the icy, slushy mess outside. “I don’t think it matters how good of a driver you are if they close the roads.”

The suggestion settled over him, furrowing his brow as he reached into his pocket. “We should probably call our kids.”

“Agreed,” she nodded and stepped away with her phone to her ear. Wanda answered on the second ring.

“Hey Mom, do you think they’ll cancel school on Monday?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Are you guys okay? Is the power still on?”

“Yeah,” Wanda answered, not sounding concerned in the slightest. “It’s really gross out though, huh?”

“Really gross,” Darcy echoed. “So you’re okay? Nothing’s going on?”

“We’re good,” her daughter assured her. “We ordered pizza. I even talked to the guy on the phone.”

She smiled. “Really? No online ordering? A real phone call?”

“Super old school,” Wanda said with a hint of pride. “Are you guys going to be able to come home tonight?”

Darcy frowned again and looked back at the roads and then at Steve. “I honestly don’t know yet, baby. We might be stuck here if they close the roads. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “This storm came out of nowhere. We were watching the news and they’re telling everybody to stay where they are.”

She sighed. “Okay, well regardless, I will let you know as soon as we figure out what we’re doing, alright?”

“Alright. If you _do_ end up staying out all night,” Wanda began. “Can we sleep downstairs tonight?”

She smiled again. “Of course you can. Pillow-fort it up.”

“Thanks Mom.”

“Oh, but I don’t want you using the fireplace,” she added quickly.

“Aw, c’mon…”

“Huh-uh,” she said firmly. “Just turn the heat up if you’re cold. You don’t know how to use it and I don’t want to worry about that on top of everything else.”

“What’s there to know how to use?” Wanda whined. “It’s a button.”

“Wanda…”

There was a sigh. “Okay, I promise. No fireplace.”

“Thank you,” she said genuinely. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

She tucked her phone back into her clutch and made her way back over to Steve, hearing the last bits of his conversation. “If you need anything, you can call Mrs. Wilson or Mrs. Barton, okay?” He paused and fought a smile. “I know you _don’t_ need anything,” he assured his daughter. “But if you _do_ , they’re both next door.” He paused, offering his hand to Darcy so she could tangle their fingers together. “Alright. I’ll text you as soon as we hear about the roads,” he promised. “I love you sweetheart.” He hung up and turned back to Darcy, slipping his phone back in his pocket. “Yeah, she doesn’t need me.”

Darcy smiled and stretched up on her toes to brush a kiss across his lips. “That means you’re doing a good job, Dad,” she reminded him, happy when his arm came to wrap around her waist, keeping her close so he could kiss her again.

“Everything okay at your house?” he asked softly once she’d sank back down into her shoes.

She nodded. “Yeah, they’re fine. We should—”

“Darcy!” Tony’s voice interrupted them a second time that night and she turned to see him making his way across the lobby. “Hey,” he said, almost breathless by the time he reached them. “You aren’t thinking of trying to get home in this, are you?”

“Not sure what the alternative is, boss,” she reminded him, tucking herself firmly into Steve’s side to siphon his warmth against the chill that swept through the lobby every time the door was opened.

“They’re closing the bridges, babe,” Tony said, looking concerned. “I just got off the phone with my guy at NYDOT, they’re just about to call it. This happened too fast,” he motioned behind them to the storm, “they need time to get the roads cleared and salted.”

“So we’re stuck here?” Steve asked, his eyebrows lifted in disbelief.

“I don’t know that I’d call it ‘stuck’ being in a luxury hotel in Manhattan but,” Tony shrugged. “Technically yes, you’re stuck.” He reached into his pocket and produced a paper pocket with two key cards. “Check with the concierge, but I think you’re in 1802.”

Darcy blinked. “Excuse me?”

He smiled. “Well, I’m not going to let you try to shack up at the Ho-Jo’s and wait this out,” he scoffed and then leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Rooms are on me. Room service, mini bar, parking, whatever you need, just tell the desk to bill me. Stay safe,” he kissed her again. “Have a good night.”

He was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, tracking down and assigning more rooms to his employees while Darcy stood, clutching the key cards in her hand.

It wasn’t a suite, but Room 1802 was one of the nicest hotel rooms Darcy had ever stayed. Every piece of furniture was deep and plush and inviting, every polished surface gleamed when Steve turned on a few lights as Darcy kicked out of her heels.

“And fuck you to those shoes in particular,” she said, offering the spikes her middle finger. She looked up to find Steve smiling at her, having glanced up from his phone and his text to Natasha. She smiled back. “Take the girl outta Brooklyn…”

He set his phone on the desk and crossed back to her. She was so much shorter without her shoes. His hands were warm as they gently pushed her hair out of her eyes and lingered, holding her face. She reached up to circle his wrists with her fingers. “I like that about you,” he said softly.

She felt her stomach flip. “You like that I’m still the same foul-mouthed mess I was when we were seventeen?”

He nodded, a smile tugging at his lips. “But allegedly with a whole new skill set I’m very curious to hear more about…” he murmured, drawing her closer until their lips were just about to touch.

She was still giggling when he kissed her, his fingers sliding into her hair as a rush of desire slid into her belly. She dropped her hands from his and ran them up his chest, beneath the lapels of his jacket. He didn’t fight her when she pushed it down his arms and dropped it to the floor behind them. She felt him smile against her lips as her touches grew greedier, pulling at the tie on his neck until he reached up and loosened it himself. He broke away from her long enough to pull it over his head and toss it aside.

Darcy didn’t know who had started moving first, but Steve was backing up toward the huge bed, pulling her with him—or she was pushing him backward while her fingers flew down the buttons of his starched white shirt. She didn’t care. Not when the backs of his knees hit the bed and he sat down, pulling her with him into his lap. Her dress hiked up over her thighs when she straddled his, her knees pinned on either side of his hips and then his hands were back in her hair, pulling her head to the side so he could press kisses down the side of her throat. She reached between them to tug at his belt buckle, pulling leather through metal until she could reach for the button and zipper.

She crashed her lips back to his, sucking his tongue into her mouth, swallowing his groan, and rolling her hips over his before she pulled back and off his lap, sliding down onto her knees. Steve shrugged out of his button down before he leaned in to capture her lips again. He broke away first, resting his forehead against hers, their mouths wet and open, breathing into each other’s. “This okay?” she asked in a hushed whisper. Her palm slid up his thigh to stroke his erection through his pants.

He smirked. “Does it seem like I’m not okay?”

She smiled back and started to tug at his pants when he shuffled them over his hips. He kicked them aside and Darcy slipped her fingers into the waistband of his boxer-briefs. She wet her lips and stretched her neck to kiss him again. “I’m just checking,” she murmured against his lips. “I’m a fan of enthusiastic consent.”

He smiled into their next kiss, his hands covering hers to shove the remaining layer away. “Then consider me consenting,” he said, his voice a low rumble that shot straight through her, making her clench her thighs together. “Enthusiastically.”

Darcy pressed one more kiss to his lips before she shifted and dropped her head, taking his cock as deep into her mouth as she could. Steve’s fingers raked into her hair again as she heard him let out a deep sigh that sounded like relief. “Jesus Christ,” he breathed while she worked her tongue along the underside, getting him as wet as she was already. She moaned as she bobbed up and down until she wrapped her hand around his base, and he tightened his grip on her curls. Then she moaned louder, encouraging him to set the pace. “Fuck, Darcy that’s—You’re—” his words caught in his chest when she sealed her lips to her hand and hollowed her cheeks, sucking intently.

She looked up to see his cheeks flushed, his eyes dark and his teeth biting down hard on his bottom lip. She could feel his thighs twitching beneath her free hand. It wasn’t too much longer that he held her hair back while she worked him over before his breathing turned ragged and the muscles in his legs began to quake. He huffed out her name, bringing her eyes up to his. “Baby, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna come—”

She nodded, still moving her mouth and hand together, twisting her wrist and sucking hard. Her other hand moved from his thigh to his balls. His hips jolted and his cock shoved deeper into her mouth, nearly gagging her, making her eyes water. He was coming a second later with a choked moan, hitting the back of her throat as she kept going, sucking and stroking him through it until she’d swallowed it all and released him to sit back on her heels.

His chest rose and fell with his heavy breathing while she swiped at the corners of her mouth. She leaned down and kissed his knee before she bit back a playful grin. “How’re you doin’, handsome?”

Steve exhaled a shaky laugh and ran a hand over his face. “That was—” he laughed again, looking more relaxed than she’d seen him since November. “You’re unbelievable,” he said, catching his breath and pulling her up off her knees to sit beside him on the bed. “You know that, right?” he asked, reaching over to push her hair off her face again.

Darcy smiled, leaning into his touch and then into his side. She let him kiss her forehead as she pressed the tip of her nose to his shoulder, feeling strangely vulnerable. “It’s nice to hear every now and then,” she admitted softly.

Steve’s hand trailed down to her cheek and titled her face back up to meet her eyes. “Well, you are,” he said in a way that made her believe him. “And I feel unbelievably lucky to be here with you.”

Darcy felt her breath catch in her chest as she nodded. “Me too,” she whispered, hoping he could tell that she really meant it. That she’d been pinching herself for days expecting to wake up, expecting the universe to step in and assert that no one could be lucky enough to have a second chance to fall in love with someone so wonderful.

He pulled her in the rest of the way and sealed his lips to hers, sweeping his hand down to cup the back of her neck while his other arm slid around her waist. She opened her lips and welcomed his tongue sweeping against hers with a soft moan.

His hand drifted up to the back of her dress and the zipper there. A thrill had just run up her spine, chasing his touch when a familiar and entirely unwelcome ringtone crashed into the room.

She tried to ignore it for three entire seconds before she made a sound of protest against Steve’s lips. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, pulling away. “I’m sorry. It could be my kids.”

“No, it’s okay,” he promised giving her hand a reassuring squeeze as she got up to hurry back across the room to the phone in her clutch.

She stared at the screen, concerned for another ring before she picked it up. “Mom?” she asked, shoving her hair back out of her face.

“Oh, hi sweetheart,” Rachel Lewis said cheerfully. “I wasn’t expecting you to answer.”

“What’s up?” she asked, leaning against the desk. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve bend down and retrieve his boxer-briefs and pull them back on.

“Oh, nothing is wrong,” Rachel sounded absolutely delighted, making it difficult for Darcy to not want to kill her. “I was just Facing with the kids earlier,” she said conversationally, still unable to remember the correct name of the app she used at least once a week. “They said you’re on a date with Steve Rogers of all people!”

Darcy pressed her hand over her eyes. “Uh, yeah, Mom. I am. On a date. With Steve Rogers of all people.” From his place across the room, Steve let out a bark of a laugh and dropped back on the bed.

“Well isn’t _that_ just a unexpected miracle?” Rachel laughed. “You know how much I always liked him, honey.”

“Yeah, I know. He was your favorite,” she repeated what she’d a million times in the wake of their breakup. From the bed, Steve laughed again and held up a thumbs up. “Mom, why are you calling me?”

“I told you,” she began. “Wanda and Pietro told—”

“Told you that I was out on a date and you decided to call anyway?” Darcy repeated in disbelief.

“I said I wasn’t expecting you to answer. What time is it there?”

“It’s a little after midnight.”

“And you’re still out?” Rachel asked. “What on earth are you doing?”

She stared at the ceiling. “Mom.”

There was a pause from New Mexico. “Oh my God, were you two having sex?”

“We were trying to!”

“Well why on earth would you answer the phone?”

“Because you never just call me out of the blue! I thought something happened!”

She could hear Steve still chuckling quietly, the sound the only thing keeping her from really hating her mother in the moment.

“Something did happen! You started dating Steve again! I wanted to tell you how I happy I was to hear that.”

“Okay,” she straightened up and pushed back her hair again. “That’s very sweet. I’m going to hang up now.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Rachel agreed quickly. “You enjoy yourself, sweetheart. You’ve certainly earned it.”

“Mom.”

“I love you!”

“Love you too,” she said tightly, more a reminder to herself than anything, and hung up.

Steve was grinning straight up at the ceiling when she sat back down on the bed. “How’s Rach?” he asked.

Darcy scoffed and shook her head. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered. “Are you sure you still want me?”

He looked over at her. “Oh, more than ever,” he assured her. “It’s pretty impressive that after twenty years your mother is _still_ trying to keep us from having sex.”

She laughed and shuffled down onto her belly to lay beside him. “She must have a sixth sense for when you’re running your hands all over her daughter.”

His eyes darted down her back and up again. “Not _all_ over…”

“Not yet,” she reminded, leaning in for one long, slow kiss, before she pulled back and stood up again. “Give me five minutes,” she said, grabbing his discarded button-down from the bed as she backed up towards the bathroom.

Steve sighed and nodded, lifting himself up onto his elbows to watch her go. “You’re killing me, Lewis,” he muttered, making her feel like she was a teenager again. The same thing he’d say when she had to go at the end of every date, untangling herself from him in his car. His face flushed and his lips swollen from her kisses.

She bit her lip and held up five fingers. “Five minutes.”

She closed the bathroom door behind her and scrambled to unhook and unzip her dress, hanging it up on the hook by the deep tub. Her thumbs hooked into the vacuum-seal of her shapewear and she rolled it down her midsection kicking the hated garment away before she fixed the lingerie she’d decided to wear underneath it. “Good thinking, Darcy,” she muttered to her reflection as she resituated everything where it was supposed to be. She swiped at the smudged makeup beneath her eyes and fluffed her curls back up, then shrugged into Steve’s shirt and buttoned two buttons in the middle. “Much better,” she nodded at herself, satisfied by what she saw.

Steve had shifted to sit up, resting his back on the pile of pillows against the tufted headboard. He smiled as she crawled up the plush comforter to join him, her hands and knees sinking a few inches into the down. “More comfortable?”

Darcy nodded as she reached him. “Much.”

He reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling her up onto his lap. Her hands went to his shoulders; he was so warm beneath the white t-shirt he still wore. His fingers trailed up her spine in long, soothing strokes. “I missed you,” he said softly.

“I was only gone a few minutes,” she reminded with a quiet giggle.

Steve’s thumb drifted over her cheekbone. “It felt like longer.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, shifting in his lap to be closer. “I know what you mean.” Darcy didn’t want to talk anymore. If they kept talking, they’d get to this thing they were taking so much care not to mention. They’d have to talk about how they’d left things before. How much that had hurt. She leaned in to capture his lips in another languid kiss that fell into a soft moan in her throat when he unbuttoned the shirt she wore and slipped it easily off her shoulders. His hands were on her breasts in the next second as he kissed his way over to her ear. She arched into his palms while her hands went behind her to unhook her bra, letting Steve slide the silky straps down her arms until he could toss it aside and roll her stiffened nipples between his fingers.

She rolled her hips over his, feeling him stiffen beneath her again in the moment before his hands drifted down to grip her hips firmly before he rolled her to her back. He was a welcome weight on top of her, as her fingers threaded into his hair and her legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed his way down her body, taking time to swirl his tongue around her nipples and pepper kisses over the stretchmarks on her lower belly before he stilled his hands on her hips, his fingers hooked into the sides of lace panties. “Take these off?” he asked, looking and sounding hopeful with his eyebrows lifted.

Darcy bit back a smile and lifted her hips. “Please do,” she said with a sigh of relief when he slid them down her legs and away, lowering himself back down between her thighs.

She squirmed when she felt him exhale over her before he turned and kissed inside her thigh. His beard scraped deliciously, making her giggle. “What was that you said about enthusiastic consent?” he murmured the question against her skin and then turned his eyes back to hers.

“Oh my God,” she laughed deeply. “If you don’t fucking touch me soon, I’m going to—”

That was all the consent he needed. Darcy’s threat dissolved into an embarrassingly loud moan when Steve flattened his tongue against her in a long lick. One hand fisted immediately in the comforter while the other raked into his hair as he devoured her. Lapping and humming with satisfaction like she was some delicious meal he’d been denying himself. Alternating sucking on her clit and thrusting his tongue deep inside, the sounds coming from them both bordering on obscene as Darcy back arched off the bed and Steve’s arms wrapped around her thighs, holding her open wider to him and pressing her hips back into the bed.

She cried out again when he pushed two fingers inside her, crooking them just right. “Fuck,” she squeaked, gripping the covers tightly, so close to her orgasm she could taste it. “Steve, please—” He didn’t need to be told twice. His full lips closed over her clit, sucking hard while he pumped his fingers, and her thighs shook. She came hard, all over his fingers, with a peal of giggles that bubbled out of her unexpectedly as Steve slowed his ministrations.

He sat up slowly as her trembling legs fell closed and pulled his t-shirt off, wiping his beard and mouth before he tossed it away and crawled back up her body. He caged his arms around her while she covered her mouth with her hand, suddenly aware of how loud she’d just been. She could feel her cheeks burn under his soft eyes and smile. “You know, you’re the only woman I’ve ever met that laughs when she comes,” he said, bending down to kiss her when she’d dropped her hands away again. She was still blushing, remembering how he used to laugh against her neck, his hand buried under her skirt while she squealed and giggled like he was tickling her. Most of her partners since had not found it quite so charming. “I missed that sound,” Steve admitted, brushing the words across her lips and Darcy was certain she was melting. Had been melting. Would be melting for the rest of her life.

Her hands went to his hips, pushing his boxer-briefs away for the second time. “Can we keep going?” she asked, the question little more than a heavy exhale while she gave up on trying to catch her breath.

Steve nodded and kicked the material away. “Do we need a condom?” he asked as she spread her thighs again.

She shook her head, grateful as she ever was for her implant. “We’ve got two years before we need a condom,” she said and wrapped her legs around his hips, urging him on.

He dropped his head and covered her lips with his, groaning when he pushed into her. Filling and stretching her inch by inch until their hips were flush and she opened her mouth beneath his, letting him stroke his tongue over hers in the long moment before he began to move.

They found a rhythm quickly, easily, like they’d never been apart. Slow and steady at first, building a delicious tension and friction that had Darcy squirming beneath him as his cock dragged against her in just the right way. She clenched her thighs tighter around his waist, begging him to go faster until he was snapping his hips into hers and her breasts were bouncing with each thrust. Steve didn’t lose his rhythm when he grabbed her hands and pulled them over her head, holding her wrists together with one hand while the other slipped between them and sought her clit.

She groaned loudly as he began to rub in time to his quickened pace. He kissed her again, their open mouths panting against each other. “Let go, baby,” he whispered, the pet name falling from his lips a second time. “I wanna feel you come.”

Darcy nodded, rolling her hips into his while he bore down harder and fucked her faster. Everything hit her at once and she came for the second time, seconds before he did. Their moans mingled between them, passed back and forth through their kisses until she inevitably started to laugh again.

But Steve was laughing too. Laughing and kissing her and telling her how perfect she was and Darcy couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so good.

***

The roads were clear by morning. The snow had stopped around four, leaving the plows and salt trucks plenty of time to work and have the roads and bridges reopened by the time the sky had brightened to silvery gray. He and Darcy showered together and opted for the quick breakfast sent to their room while they got dressed, having pushed the real world away long enough. He was worried about Natasha, having been left alone all night. He knew Darcy was worried about her twins—or at least anxious to get back to them. Still, she lingered in his car for a long goodbye kiss when he pulled up to her house.

He hadn’t managed to wipe the smile off his face by the time he got home. The downstairs was neat and quiet when he dropped his keys on the kitchen counter. It was only a little after eight, he reminded himself as he refolded the blanket from the back of the couch and did a check of all the windows and the front door. All locked.

The music didn’t register until he was at the foot of the stairs, then he heard it more clearly, coming from Natasha’s room. He smiled to himself when he heard her singing along to some boyband that sounded like a dozen others. Her bedroom door was open halfway and he stopped just outside. He knocked on the frame. “Hey,” he called over the music. “I’m home.”

“Uh—hi Dad,” she called, scurrying across the room to turn off her stereo. He frowned. She sounded…nervous? What did she have to sound nervous about?

He pushed open the door and stopped in surprise at the sight of his daughter in a dress he’d never seen before. Her hair was curled and pulled back from her face and she was wearing makeup. Not a lot, but her eyes were lined unevenly, and her cheeks were too pink. Across her vanity were bottles and brushes and palettes. Things he’d never bought her. Things she’d never asked for or seemed to be interested in. “What’s…all this?” he asked, tension unwillingly crawling up the back of his neck.

“Um. It’s…just…” she shrugged and looked over her shoulder at the makeup and then down at her dress. It was dark green velvet, long sleeved, and it hit her right at the knee. “I was just trying it on and seeing what I wanted to—um—” She fidgeted, looking guilty. Natasha rarely ever looked guilty.

“Where did you get that dress?” he asked and immediately wished he’d phrased it better. He should have told her she looked very pretty, he realized when her face fell. _Then_ asked where the dress had come from. Not sounded like he thought she stole it.

“I bought it with my babysitting money,” she said before he could apologize for the way he’d asked. “For the Snowball.”

Steve blinked. “What’s the Snowball?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew.

“The…dance…that…” she coughed. “That, um. That Clint asked me to?”

He stared at her, his mind unfairly blank. “You’re planning on going to a dance?” he asked before the rest of her sentence caught up with him. “With _Clint?_ When did this happen?”

She shrugged and avoided his gaze. “I don’t know,” she said, which he knew was a lie. “Last week, I guess?”

“Last _week?_ ” he repeated. “When is this dance?”

“It’s the Friday before Christmas,” she said, still not looking at him.

“And when were you planning on telling me about it? Or, I don’t know, asking if it was okay that you went?”

Her expression darkened and she stood up straighter, more defiant. “I was gonna tell you,” she said quietly.

“When?” he asked again. “Not before you said yes to Clint. Not before you bought a dress without telling me,” he said, an unpleasant mix of anger and sadness and panic swirling in his stomach. He couldn’t remember her ever keeping something like this from him, even for a day. She told him about everything.

And he knew—deep down, he _did_ know—that that wouldn’t be the case forever. That she was almost a teenager now and she’d have secrets she wouldn’t share with him. That she was growing up and it wasn’t always going to be the two of them against the world—that eventually, they’d fight and she’d claim she hated him and that was all part of a normal teenaged girl’s life. He knew that.

But knowing that did nothing to calm the feelings simmering in his gut.

“Darcy said you’d be fine with it,” Natasha said sullenly, crossing her arms over her chests.

He blinked again in surprise. “Excuse me?” he asked. “You asked _Darcy_ if you could go to this dance?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t _ask_ her,” she said. “I told her about it and she said since Sam asked Wanda and Pietro was going to go by himself, she didn’t think you’d care if I went with Clint.”

She was saying this like it all made perfect sense when nothing could be farther from the truth. “Based on what?” he asked. When Natasha didn’t answer, he asked again. “What was she basing this on? This blanket permission she was handing out?” He didn’t want to think that Darcy had given his daughter permission to go on a date without telling him. But he didn’t want to think that Natasha was lying to him, either.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Why don’t you ask her? But if you’re going to be all weird about it then I just won’t go.”

“Whoa, whoa,” he held up his hand. “Can I have a _second_ to process what the hell is going on here before you decide I’m the bad guy?”

“You’re not the bad guy,” she rolled her eyes again. When had she started doing that? “You’re just going to make me stay home while everyone else goes out and has fun because you want to keep treating me like I’m five years old. It’s _fine,_ ” she barked out the last word, dropping her arms to her sides with her jaw clenched. She looked painfully familiar when she was angry.

She looked like _him._

“Natasha, don’t talk to me like that and don’t put words in my mouth,” he said, an intense headache starting to blossom at his temples.

“I don’t want to talk to you at all,” she said suddenly, her lips pouting like she might cry. “Can you please get out of my room and leave me alone?”

He stared at her, torn between wanting to give her the space she asked for and wanting to put his arms around her and tell her he was sorry. Especially when he saw her throat bob with a hard swallow. “Nat…”

“ _Please?_ ” she asked again, her voice cracking this time.

Steve sighed and took two steps back into the hallway, closing her door behind him. He made it down the hall to his own bedroom and closed his door, sagging against it, the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

What had happened?

Half an hour ago he’d been on cloud nine, coasting on the high of what was hands-down some of the best sex he’d ever had.

He’d been looking forward to spending the day with Natasha and thinking about inviting Darcy and her kids over so they could all have dinner together.

And now Natasha didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to tell him things that were going on in her life. His little girl had been keeping things from him. Things she would rather tell someone else.

It hurt. And it hurt worse because the person she’d confided in was Darcy. Darcy, who he’d spent all week with. Just spent all night with. Who’d had ample opportunity to tell him what was going on with his own child and who had said nothing.

He told himself he wasn’t going to lose his temper as he reached for his phone. He promised himself he’d keep his cool and let her explain what was most likely just a miscommunication.

“Hey,” she greeted with a smile he could hear in her voice. “You miss me already, you dweeb?”

He huffed out an obligatory chuckle and rubbed at his eyes. His headache was going nowhere. “Uh, hey,” he greeted, ignoring her question.

“What’s up?” she asked, sounding concerned. “Everything okay?”

“Natasha and I just got into a fight,” he sat down on the edge of his bed.

“Oh no,” Darcy said immediately. “What happened? What did you fight about?”

He sighed. “This school dance she was asked to?”

There was a pause, and he felt his stomach twist again. What he’d been _hoping_ she would say was something along the lines of, ‘What school dance?’ What she said instead was, “Were you cool about it?”

Steve closed his eyes. “Was I _cool_ about it?” he repeated. “No, I didn’t have a chance to be cool about it, Darcy. I was too busy being surprised about it.

“Shit,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m sorry, Steve. I told her—”

“You told her she could go?” he cut her off in disbelief. “Without asking me?”

“What?” Darcy asked. “No, of course not!”

“That’s what she just told me; that you said I’d be fine with it? Why would you think that?”

“Okay, that is _not_ what I said,” she countered emphatically. “I told her I didn’t think you would say no if she told you how excited she was to go.”

“Why would you tell her that?”

Darcy paused again. “Because…she’s a twelve-year-old girl who got asked to her first dance, Steve. I didn’t think you _would_ say no.”

“You shouldn’t have told her anything,” he snapped, surprising even himself with how angry he was at her. “You should have stayed out of it, you’re not her mother.”

“Hey, hang on,” she jumped back in. “I told her to talk to you about it and I’m sorry that she misunderstood what I said.” If she’d just left it at that, he would have forgiven her. He would have apologized and then waited a few hours to do the same to Natasha and this all would have been over by noon.

But she didn’t stop there.

“And if I _was_ her mother,” Darcy went on, neutralizing the apology that was sitting on the tip of his tongue. “I wouldn’t be blaming someone for trying to help my daughter. I think I’d be more concerned about why she felt like she had to hide something she was excited about in the first place.”

He scoffed. “You’re giving me parenting advice?”

“Assuming you still can’t admit when you’re not perfect at something?” she asked, her tone a few degrees colder. “No. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I realize you thought you were helping her,” he said, ignoring that jab and trying to keep his voice and his temper steady. “But you should have at least told me what was going on.”

“That wouldn’t have been fair to Natasha,” she said, just as evenly. “She didn’t ask me to talk to you—”

“She’s twelve!” he exclaimed. “She shouldn’t be keeping secrets from me and you shouldn’t be helping her.”

“Oh my God,” Darcy laughed joylessly. “Her confiding in me about _one thing_ is not a reflection of some failure on your part, Steve. No one’s supposed to do this on their own.”

“It’s cute that you think that,” he snapped before he could stop himself. “But I was doing just fine.” And if even if he’d been able to stop himself from saying it, he didn’t want to. He knew that Darcy considered them both in the same boat but they weren’t. She wasn’t a single parent. Not really. She had a co-parent she’d _chosen_ to move away from. Only a phone call away if she needed support or another perspective. She didn’t have to try to be both parents. Didn’t have to lay awake at night thinking about all the ways she was falling short. She didn’t have any idea how hard the last ten years had been. How lonely and terrifying it was raising a little girl all on your own.

There was a long pause from her end of the line. “You’re right,” she said, even colder than before. “You were. You _are_. Natasha’s an amazing kid and you raised her all on your own…the last thing I want to do is come between the two of you.”

“Darcy…”

“No, seriously,” she cut him off. “Don’t worry about it. It was fun while it lasted.”

“Darcy—”

But she’d already hung up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. I know.


	5. Two Weeks Until Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the wonderful things you all said last chapter. I don't ever feel like I deserve the love you all heap upon me, but I'm so grateful for it.
> 
> And I realize this was a fic that promised to be completed by the actual holiday, but obviously that's not going to happen so thank you for your patience as well.
> 
> There is one line I lifted straight from the BSC Netflix reboot because it's too good to only exist once in the universe.

Chapter Five

(Two weeks until Christmas)

By Sunday night, it was apparent that Steve wasn’t going to call her back. That was fine, she told herself. He seemed to think she crossed a line with Natasha, and she wasn’t going to force herself back into his life if he didn’t want her there. It had been fun while it lasted, just like she’d said. There was nothing wrong with that; and if he was going to freak out anytime someone tried to offer him a little support, it was better to know that now before feelings were involved.

Even though there already _were_ feelings involved, a traitorous little part of her heart whispered when the snow started to fall again on Sunday night. And it had been more than just fun while it had lasted.

The snow closed schools on Monday but Darcy’s office was still open and needed her there in person. A welcome distraction from all the moping around she’d been doing all weekend. She did her best to not check her phone obsessively all day—no calls, no texts, no emails, no surprise—and left as early as she could, citing the possibility of more snow for dipping out of her last meeting early.

The delivery driver was just pulling up as she crunched up the sidewalk from the bus stop. He handed off the bag of pho and spring rolls at the mailbox and Darcy considered the meal a success because she pulled out dishes and silverware instead of everyone eating out of the takeout containers.

Her house was quieter than usual; Wanda and Pietro were smart enough to figure out that she and Steve were on the outs. Their considerate silence on the topic only made her feel a million times worse for getting involved with him in the first place. Add it to the list of things she didn’t think would blow up so quickly in her face. She set the dishwasher running and started up the stairs with a mind for a Soft-Eyed-Mom™ talk. Her thoughts were derailed when she found neither of them in their rooms, but in the office at the end of the hall.

She stopped short when she found them sitting on the floor, their heads together, flipping through pages of a book she couldn’t see. In the armchair in the corner, she saw a weathered box labeled ‘Darcy’s High School Shit’ in Jane’s messy handwriting. Jane had, after all, been the one to come back and help pack up their parents’ house before they moved to New Mexico. The box had been shipped to her in California and she had tossed it in the attic, and then on a moving truck, and then onto the bottom shelf in this room, without giving it a second thought.

She leaned in the doorway. “Uh oh,” she said, startling them both into turning around. “What’d we find?”

Wanda smiled. “You were in a lot of clubs, Mom.”

When Pietro moved, she saw they’d found one of her yearbooks. “Just the cool ones,” she defended herself lightly, moving to the armchair and depositing the open box onto the ground.

Her son frowned. “Um...no offense? But the Sci-Fi Film Appreciation Club isn’t really cool.”

“Some offense taken,” she laughed. “And that’s co-founder and vice-president, thank you very much. Your Aunt Jane was the president and you’d better not let her hear you defaming her hard work like that.”

Wanda turned another page of black and white group photos. “Everyone’s clothes were so shiny,” she commented, her face a mix between disgust and fascination.

“Yeah…” Darcy said regretfully, thinking of all the pleather and polyester that had once filled her closet. “Shiny was in.”

“Everyone looks like they’re in _Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion,_ ” she went on, squinting at the page.

Darcy smiled. “Well, that movie isn’t supposed to be a period piece,” she reminded. “It was styled appropriately for the year it was made.”

“Gross,” she whispered under her breath, making her mother laugh again. She looked up as Pietro stole the book back. “Can we look at your scrapbooks?”

She let a heavy sigh pass through her lips. “My scrapbooks,” she repeated, scrunching her nose for a second before she relented. “Sure,” she reached into the box and pulled out the one she’d made for her junior year without thinking. “Knock yourself out.”

“Oh my God,” Pietro laughed as soon as he opened the book to the second page and saw a photo of Jane and Darcy standing on either side of their mother on her 50th birthday. “Mom. Why does your hair look like that?”

“Space buns?” Wanda asked, turning around to look at Darcy again. “Space buns _and_ overalls?”

She craned her neck for a second before she gave up and got down on the ground with them. She leaned against the chair and pulled the book back toward herself so she could see. Pietro and Wanda crowded on either side like they had when they were little, and she’d read them stories before bed. “Okay, _these_ were not space buns,” she said firmly, pointing to her twin pigtail buns. “These are Baby Spice buns. See all this hair in the front? All these little bangs and greasy looking pieces? Very important distinction.”

Wanda looked at her expectantly. “And…that makes it…better?”

“It makes it different,” Darcy said diplomatically as Pietro reached over her to turn the page. She had structured all of her scrapbooks the same way when she’d made them in high school. They all started with pictures from their family vacation to the beach for her mother’s birthday at the end of summer and ended with the summer break the following year. Darcy hadn’t looked at this book in so long, she couldn’t remember what came next.

And she was entirely unprepared for the way her heart jumped into her throat at the sheer number of photos of Steve that decorated each page. Mostly photos of the two of them, kissing at the pier, standing in line for rides at Coney Island with their friends, dressed up for Homecoming and then in costumes for Halloween, Christmas formal…on and on it went. Each photo labeled with a glittering blue pen and surrounded with little hearts.

“Okay, I’m just gonna say it,” Pietro said after they’d turned a few pages. “Are we a _hundred_ percent sure that Natasha’s dad is the same guy in these pictures?”

Despite the ache in her chest, Darcy laughed. “He was pretty scrawny, wasn’t he?”

“Nat said he was in the Army,” Wanda prompted, leaning in to squint again at a photo of the two of them from New Year’s Eve 1996, making Darcy wonder if she might need glasses. “But now I’m not sure if she meant the United States Army? Maybe she meant like…the Salvation Army.”

She snorted. “She meant the United States Army,” Darcy assured her. “He grew about a foot our senior year.” She remembered him agonizing about being forced to buy new pants every few months when his kept turning up too short. “Something must have happened to make him able to put on weight though,” she added. “Because he was still really skinny when he shipped out.”

“Huh,” Pietro said, shaking his head. “Weird.” He had more questions as they turned the pages. Questions about the things she and her friends used to do when she was his age, questions about what the neighborhood used to be like, questions that tried to tease out who she used to be before she was his mother.

But Wanda was pensive, studying the pages of the scrapbook until she found one with a collection of photos in and around Christeone’s. A photo Alexandra, the flour-dusted ray of sunshine who used to take her order every afternoon. Nonni, the owner, who must have had a real first name once but was so old and so grandmotherly to everyone that it seemed to have been forgotten by everyone long ago. A photo that someone else had taken with her camera—one of her and Steve on the bench outside, a box of something between them. Probably cannoli, if her memory still served. Whoever had been clicking the shutter that day had done so while they were laughing, right as Steve had reached over to swipe powdered sugar off her nose.

“I like this one,” Wanda said quietly. “You look really happy. You look…” She stopped herself abruptly and looked back up at Darcy. “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you and Steve really in love when you were in high school?”

Darcy smiled thoughtfully and ran her fingers gently through Wanda’s thick hair when she sat back against her. “We certainly thought so,” she said after a long moment to think about how to answer.

“Real love?” Wanda asked.

“Sure,” she said easily because no matter how long it had been, she could conjure up the way she’d felt in that picture like it had only been yesterday. The smell of the wind that blew her hair around, the taste of cannoli cream heavy and sweet on her tongue, the sound of Steve’s quiet laughter and the feeling that she’d be perfectly happy to do this exact thing with this exact person for the rest of her life. “Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t live without each other kind of thing,” she added, knowing Wanda was just about to ask for more specifics. She cleared her throat and chased that memory and a million other good ones away with it. “But just goes to show you don’t know what you’re talking about when you’re seventeen because here we are, twenty years later, living without each other just fine.”

“Bad news for you and Sam,” Pietro muttered, earning him a hard shove from his sister before she turned her attention back to Darcy.

“Okay, but why _did_ you break up?” she asked and then added quickly, “I mean, when you were younger. If you were that crazy about each other, why didn’t it work?”

“Because if it had, we wouldn’t be here,” Pietro said looking like he was fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

Darcy laughed lightly. “Among other reasons,” she agreed. “But also, because his mom died right after graduation and a lot of plans had to be pushed back. He had to take care of Carol—his little sister—and they had to move to Louisiana to stay with their uncle while Carol finished high school. And he needed a different way to pay for college, so he had to join the Army and…” she shrugged. “It just didn’t make any sense for us to try to stay together.”

Wanda didn’t look convinced. “But you could’ve written letters and tried to—”

“Wanda, c’mon,” Pietro broke in suddenly. “She doesn’t want to talk about it; stop making her.”

Her daughter frowned, her cheeks going red at her brother’s chastisement. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Darcy kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay, sweetie. It was a long time ago.” But she closed the scrapbook just the same and unwound her arms from her kids. “How about we go back downstairs,” she suggested. “You guys do a battle on Mario Kart and I’ll play the winner.”

They had scrambled to their feet and pounded down the steps practically before the words were out of her mouth. She got up slower, her back protesting mildly the way that it did these days, and sat back in the armchair, idly flipping through the yearbook they’d left out.

She didn’t want to think about the day that Steve had told her they should break up. About how she’d pathetically told him there were a million ways they could keep in touch and she’d wait for him until he cut her off and said he wouldn’t let her. She didn’t want to think about their conversation on Saturday either. About how angry he was when she’d only been trying to help. How defensive he’d been and how quick he was to remind her that he was just fine on his own.

And she definitely didn’t want to think that she’d been pretty quick too. Quick to defend herself. Quick to snap back before she could stop what she was saying from sounding like an attack. Quick to be the one who quit first this time, saving someone else the chance of breaking her heart again.

Darcy left everything on the floor in the office and went downstairs where she played three rounds of Nintendo with her kids.

She lost every time.

***

Natasha looked ill as she handed over her father’s cell phone a few days later. “You have to be so quick,” she said for the millionth time. “He’ll totally flip if he knows what we’re doing. I’m not even supposed to have people over today.”

“How long does he usually spend at these end of semester meetings?” Pietro asked once Natasha had unlocked the phone with her birthdate.

She looked at her watch. “I don’t know. But he might come back when he realizes he doesn’t have his phone. Hurry up.” She’d lifted it from his coat pocket when he’d dropped her off after school, citing an unavoidable faculty meeting that he had to rush back for.

Pietro coughed and cleared his throat, summoning his courage and remembering that his mom deserved to be happy and so did Natasha’s dad. And it was obvious to anyone with eyes that they made each other happy. And they clearly weren’t going to handle this like adults. Pietro knew he had to step in. It was his responsibility as the oldest.

(By twelve minutes. But twelve minutes was still twelve minutes spent as the first born.)

He scrolled through the contacts on Steve’s phone. “He still has her saved in here,” he commented when he found his mother’s name. “That’s a good sign.”

But Natasha was less convinced. “He never deletes anyone,” she said, her lips in a straight line. “I think he still has the nurses at the hospital who took care of me when I was born saved.”

“Oh,” his face fell.

“Just do it,” Wanda insisted, pressing her finger to the name on the screen before he could. She rolled her eyes at the look he shot her and then waved her hands at him, urging him to put the phone to his ear.

“…Hello?” his mother answered on the fourth ring.

He coughed, his mind going blank. “Uh…hi,” he said and then coughed again, deepening his voice. “Hi, Darcy.”

“Steve?” she asked, filling him with hope that he’d fooled her.

“Uh, yeah,” he dropped his voice again. “It’s…me. Steve. Hey.”

Wanda rolled her eyes again at the same time that Natasha wrinkled her nose. “You should hang up,” Wanda mouthed the words.

“Are you okay?” His mother’s voice brought him back to the task at hand. “You sound…” she paused. “Are you getting sick?”

“Sick from…” he blanked and immediately panicked. “Missing…you?”

There was another long pause from her end of the phone. “Really?” she asked her tone changing to one that made him twice as nervous. “Because you don’t really sound sick. You sound more like…a twelve-year-old with a stolen cell phone.”

He blanched. Unable to move as both Nat and Wanda frantically hissed at him to hang up. “Uh—”

“Pietro Daniel Maximoff,” he winced at the use of his middle name. She sounded like she was inhaling through her nose. She did that when she was trying not to yell. “I grew you inside of my body, do you honestly think I can’t recognize your voice on the phone?”

“Hi Mom,” he said finally, his face unwilling to contort from its twist of dread.

“I don’t want to know what you thought you were doing,” she said evenly. “Or what you hoped to accomplish, and I _do not_ want to know how you managed to steal Steve’s phone to play this little trick—”

“No, Mom, it’s not a—”

“But you better hang up and put it back before I decide to ground you until you’re thirty instead of just until you’re eighteen. Do you understand me?”

He gulped. “Yes ma’am.”

“Did your sister have anything to do with this?”

“Uh, no,” he lied, watching Wanda sink back against Nat’s pillows with a sigh of relief. “This was. Um. All me.”

Another long pause. “Uh-huh. Hang up and go home.”

“Mom—”

“Hang up,” she said again clearly. “And go _home_. And your homework better be done by the time I get back.”

He sighed. “Okay,” he muttered. “Sorry. I was just trying—”

“Ahbahbah!” she cut him off with a string of nonsense. “Go. Now.”

Pietro hung up without another word and gave Natasha the phone back. Despite what his mother had just ordered him to do, he and Wanda stayed put while Natasha put Steve’s phone back downstairs where he would have set it on the counter. Where he would look as soon as he returned, realizing it was not with him.

“Okay, but she has a point,” he said once Nat had returned and they were shoving their coats back on. “My mom, I mean.”

“That this was a stupid idea and we’re all going to be grounded for life?” Natasha asked, dropping back down onto her bed.

“No,” he waved that away. His mother had never grounded him for longer than a week. And that had been for driving his dad’s car through the closed garage door and into the garden wall when he was ten. This was nothing by comparison. “She recognized my voice. Nat, you can’t be the one to try and call your dad from my mom’s phone.”

“Oh,” she looked thoughtful. “That’s a better idea. I was already thinking it’d be something I’d end up in therapy over…trying to flirt with my own dad.”

They both turned their eyes on Wanda, who wrinkled her nose. “Can’t we just _text_ him from Mom’s phone?”

Natasha was already shaking her head. “He _hates_ texting.”

“And you sound just like Mom on the phone,” he added.

Wanda sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it tonight,” she assured them before she shook her head. “No. I’ll do it tomorrow. She’s already pissed at Pietro, she’s definitely not going to let her guard down tonight.” They shared a solemn nod before Wanda frowned. “What am I supposed to say again?”

***

Natasha was still barely speaking to him by the time Friday night rolled around. Steve didn’t blame her. The apology he’d attempted on Saturday—and then again on Sunday—hadn’t been his best. They’d reached a sort of stalemate, but to call their argument resolved wouldn’t have been accurate.

She hadn’t mentioned the dance again. And he hadn’t seen any of her friends around, despite never explicitly telling her she couldn’t see them.

The house was quiet. Sullen.

Until his phone lit up with Darcy’s number.

Steve told himself that he hadn’t been hoping she’d call. Hadn’t been talking himself in and out of picking up the phone himself all week. Told himself he hadn’t been missing her.

He waited three rings until he picked it up. “Hello?”

“Hey Steve, how’s it going?”

He blinked at her casual tone. “Darcy,” he stated dumbly. “Uh. Hi.”

There was a pause. “Hi…”

He waited for her to continue but when it didn’t seem like she was going to, he inhaled. “It’s…surprising to hear from you,” he admitted.

“Yeah…” Another pause. Longer this time. “I…uh…was—” she stumbled, and Steve frowned. Something was off. “Thinking we should probably…get together again.” He narrowed his eyes. Something was definitely off. “Soonish?”

He felt his eyebrows lift. “Soonish?” he repeated. Darcy didn’t use words like ‘soonish’.

“Yeah,” she said excitedly, her voice jumping an octave before she coughed again, and Steve realized who he was talking to. “We could—uh—talk about the good old days…have some wine on…the…rocks?”

Steve closed his eyes and rubbed his brow. “Wine on the rocks, Wanda?” he asked plainly. “Is that the best you could come up with?”

To her credit, Wanda didn’t try to continue her facade. “Is that not a thing?”

“It is not.”

“Well how do you drink it? Warm?” she asked. “That’s gross.”

Steve sighed and shook his head. “How about you give your mother her phone back and we pretend this never happened?”

“No, wait,” she scrambled. “Don’t hang up yet. Please can’t you just call her and talk to her?”

“Wanda—”

“She’s so sad, though; I know she feels terrible about your fight,” she persisted. “And look, I was looking at pictures of the two of you from when you were in high school and you were so in love—”

“Well that was a long time ago,” he said patiently.

“But it was _real_ wasn’t it?” she asked, undeterred. “Wasn’t it that can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t live without each other kind of thing?” When he found he couldn’t answer, she went on. “How can something like that just go away? And then you found your way back to each other after all this time—that has to mean _something_ doesn’t it?”

“It means I’m hanging up, Wanda,” he said firmly. “Put your mother’s phone back.”

He hung up before she could protest any further and pushed away from his desk. He opened the closet door in his office, intending to unearth some of the presents he still needed to wrap. Instead, he found himself pushing things around until a box emerged that had been shoved all the way to the back and forgotten about in the ten years since anyone had touched it.

He hadn’t meant to drag it out for more than a few minutes, but as he stared at his name scrawled in heavy black marker on the lid, he realized he couldn’t remember what was inside.

And when Natasha knocked tentatively on the door and found him sitting in the armchair right next to the closet, the contents of the box spread all around, he was surprised to find that an hour had passed without him realizing it. He looked up and offered her a smile. “Hey.”

Her brow furrowed as she stepped inside. “What is all this stuff?” she asked before she lit up and seized a photo of him and his sister standing outside of their old apartment. “Is this _you_?” she asked with a light laugh. “You and Aunt Carol?”

“Yep,” he nodded. “Grandma used to take our photo every year on the first day of school.”

“How old were you?”

He squinted at the picture. “In that one? I think that was ninth grade so…fourteen? Aunt Carol would have been your age, I guess.”

She looked closer. “You were so little.”

“Don’t remind me,” he laughed lightly.

Natasha picked up another one, kneeling down beside the ottoman. “Is this Grandma?” she asked, flipping it back so he could see.

He nodded again with a tightness in his throat at the memory someone had captured. His mother and her dark blonde hair and warm smile, helping him with his bowtie for prom. Her wrists were so thin they looked like dogwood branches. The next one in the stack that Natasha reached for was the professional one from the event itself with the bad lighting and draped background.

“Whoa,” she said, her eyes wide. “Darcy’s dress was so sparkly.”

He laughed. “Yeah, it was.” Sequins had popped off it all night. She’d called the little teal discs her fish scales.

She looked at it a little longer, a soft smile playing on her lips until she set it down. “I can’t believe you had a bowl cut,” she laughed.

Steve felt something relax in his chest, realizing it was the first time in a week that he’d heard her be anything less than hostile toward him. “ _Everyone_ had a bowl cut,” he said firmly. “I was lucky my hair was already blonde or I would’ve frosted just the front pieces.”

“Oh my God you would _not,_ ” she insisted, looking horrified.

“No, I would have,” he assured her.

She looked through more photos and flipped through his yearbook. She had a million questions about what kind of things he used to do, what his favorite classes were, his favorite teachers. “How come I’ve never seen this stuff before?” she asked finally, and then before he could answer, “Why don’t you ever talk about Grandma? Or—” she stopped, her lips pursed into a frown.

Steve swallowed hard. “Or your mom?” he asked gently.

She nodded, her eyes downcast slightly. “I know it’s hard for you to talk about her,” she said after a moment. “But I feel like I don’t…” she stopped again. “Like I don’t know anything about who she was. Or about who you were before I was born.” She looked up from the photos. “I mean, I at least have pictures of Mom, but I’ve never seen any of this stuff.”

He looked at her for a long moment, struck suddenly by how grown up she was. “You’re right,” he said, blinking. “It is hard for me to talk about her. And it’s hard for me to talk about Grandma and…and who I was before I lost both of them but that’s not…” he coughed. “That’s not a good excuse. You deserve to know these things,” he said with a small nod before he smiled. “I think I just got so caught up in being your dad that it was…” he shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it was easier to just forget I was a whole person before that.”

Natasha’s smile was soft and understanding when she sat back on her heels. “What were you like?”

He laughed quietly. “I was a dweeb.”

She giggled. “Really?”

He nodded. “Huge dweeb,” he reiterated and dug through to find a picture of himself from middle school. All acne and bad hair and clothes that didn’t fit. “I was in the Barber Shop Quartet and history club and I used to get beat up three times a week.”

Natasha snorted and shook her head. “But Darcy liked you, though,” she said after a minute.

He smiled again, another twist in his chest. “Yeah,” he nodded. “She did.”

She’d found another photo of the two of them together. This one outside the Italian bakery Darcy used to love so much. The powdered sugar from their cookies and cannoli used to cling to her full lips and linger on his for hours after he’d walked her home. “Do you think if you hadn’t gone into the Army and met Mom,” Natasha’s head tilted to one side. “Do you think you would have married Darcy?”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised by the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if I had, I wouldn’t have you, would I?”

“True,” she considered this out loud. “And she wouldn’t have Wanda and Pietro.”

“Also true.”

“What was Mom like?” she asked, looking up again. “Was she like Darcy?”

He blinked. “Uh, no,” he admitted with a soft laugh. “She was…well,” he let his elbows drop onto his knees. “She was more like me, I guess.”

His daughter raised an eyebrow. “Neat?”

He laughed again. “ _Super_ neat. She used to organize the canned goods when she had a bad day.”

“Oh jeez…” she giggled.

“But she was a lot more fun than I am,” he added. “She used to love the rollercoasters at Coney Island, and she made me go skydiving on our honeymoon.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “ _What?_ ” she coughed out in shock. “I don’t believe it.”

“She did,” he promised. “I told her we could do whatever she wanted—”

“And she wanted to jump out of a _plane_?” Natasha repeated. “And she talked _you_ into it?”

He nodded, not mentioning that convincing him had taken almost nothing back then. “Sure did.”

Once her laughter had subsided, she folded her arms over the ottoman. “What else was she like?”

He smiled again, another lump firmly lodged in his throat. “She was smart and funny and independent,” he remembered with ease before he finally had to admit out loud what he hadn’t wanted to think all week. “And she would be so mad at me right now.”

Natasha frowned. “Why?” she asked, confused. “I’m the one who didn’t tell you about the dance.”

“But I’m the one who made you think you _couldn’t_ tell me about the dance,” he reminded gently. “And you’re right…I do still treat you like you’re a little kid,” he admitted. “Even though you keep proving to me how grown up you are.”

Her lips dipped into another thoughtful frown. “I’m still sorry about what I said,” she said softly.

“Well,” he inhaled. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me something you were excited about. I don’t want you to miss out anything, Nat,” he went on. “I want you to be a normal, happy kid and if that means I have to be okay with letting you go and letting you grow up then that’s on me, okay?” He dropped his head and met her eye. “That’s not for you to worry about. Got it?”

She nodded and then studied his face for a long moment. “Wait…so does this mean I _can_ go to the dance?”

He took in another breath and smiled. “Yes,” he nodded. “You can go to the dance.”

“With Clint?”

“With Clint,” he echoed, even though he’d prefer she _didn’t_ have a date at all. At least until she was twenty-five.

“And I can wear high heels?” she asked, getting to her feet again.

He blinked. “Uh—I…didn’t know that was part of the negotiation…”

“Please?” she clasped her hands together. “I know my dress isn’t floor length but it’ll look so weird if I have to wear my ballet flats again and they’re all stained with salt already anyway and—”

“Okay!” he laughed, holding up his hands in surrender. “Okay! You can wear high heels. But don’t go crazy on the makeup, alright? My heart can only take so much.”

Before he could lower his hands, Natasha launched herself at him and hugged him tightly. “You’re the _best_ ,” she said, her words muffled into his shoulder. “I love you.”

Steve smiled, forcing down the rush of tears her words brought stinging to his eyes and hugged her back. “I love you too sweetheart,” he said quietly and kissed the side of her head. “Go call Clint,” he told her when she let him go. “Tell him he better not have asked anyone else in the meantime.”

She grinned widely and nodded. “Okay, I will.” She’d ducked out of the office for only a few seconds before she popped back in. “Oh, and Dad?”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“You know how you said Mom would be mad at you for making me think I couldn’t go to the dance?”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Nat said quietly. “I think she knows you’re doing your best.”

Again, Steve found it difficult to breathe. “Thank you,” he managed to choke after a second.

“But I think she _would_ be mad if you let Darcy get away a second time just because you waited too long to apologize.”

He felt his lips twitch, fighting a smile. “You think she would, huh?”

“Well,” she shrugged. “She wouldn’t want you to be alone,” she said matter-of-factly before she smiled again. “I don’t want you to be alone either.”

He nodded slowly. “Message received,” he promised. “Go make your phone call.”

She pounded back up the stairs and Steve sat back in his chair, a weight feeling like it had lifted from his chest. When he sat back up straight and reached to clean up the mess he’d made in going through all his old stuff, he found a photo of his mother, one he’d taken some Christmas morning. She was at the counter with her cup of coffee and Steve decided to frame it for Natasha so she could see how much she looked like her grandmother.

The next photo in the stack was of Darcy. Sixteen years old with sparkling blue eyes, messy hair, and her lips and nose covered in soft white sugar.

***

By the following Tuesday, Darcy had given up on hearing from Steve. She’d talked herself out of calling him a dozen times. Even going so far as to open her phone, find his name, and hover over the screen with her thumb before she’d set it aside, her mind blank when she thought about what she would say if he picked up.

Or worse—how she’d feel if he _didn’t_ pick up.

She heard the doorbell ring as she was wrapping up the leftover pizza in tin foil. Heard Wanda answer it and speak with whoever it was before she thanked them and closed the door. Darcy paused, her hand on the open refrigerator door. “Anything good?” she called across the house.

“Uh, maybe?” Wanda said uncertainly. “I don’t know,” she said as she entered the kitchen, her brother trailing behind her, looking halfway interested. “It’s for you.”

Darcy put the pizza in with the takeout boxes and closed the door. Wanda set the box on the counter and she and Pietro dropped onto their usual stools. Darcy didn’t have her glasses on or she would have recognized the box much sooner, but as soon as she was able to focus on the white cardboard and red and white striped baker’s twine, she felt her eyes widen. The label on the top of the box was just like she remembered it, the letters pale blue and in a curling cursive script that jumped out as she reached for a pair of scissors.

“Oh,” Wanda held out a small white envelope. “There was a card.”

Darcy took if from her and opened it, wondering if maybe Tony’s assistant had done her due diligence this year and found out the perfect thing for a year-end gift, until she read the message in faintly familiar handwriting.

_I’m sorry. I forgot how much sweeter life is with you around. – Steve_

She read it a few times before she set it aside and cut the strings on the box. Inside was an assortment of all her favorites from Christeone’s—including a half dozen perfectly stuffed and sugared cannoli.

It tasted even better than she remembered.


	6. One Week Until Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience and love and understand and all the things you give me that make this little corner of the internet so great. Hope your holidays were merry and your new year starts calm and peaceful. 
> 
> (andofcourseihopeyoudon'ttotallyhatethis)

Chapter Six

(One Week Until Christmas)

“Mom! Can you come tie my tie?”

“In a minute!”

“Mom! What time is it?”

“It’s six-fifteen, Wanda!”

“ _What?!_ ”

“You have plenty of time!”

“What time is everyone coming over?”

“Quarter til!”

“ _How_ is that plenty of time?”

“Should I just call Dad?”

Darcy set down her fork for the third time, abandoning the fried rice she’d been trying to eat for the last ten minutes in between texts from the other parents and the demands of her children being yelled from their rooms.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs and ran her hand over her face. She was so goddamn tired.

This pre-dance get-together was supposed to be at Clint Barton’s house. But with his older brother suddenly struck with the horrible flu that was going around, and Darlene and Tom Wilson’s lower floor in the midst of a remodel, Darcy had discovered her own house had been volunteered by her son when she’d come home from work the night before.

The plan had been to start her end-of-year holiday last night with a soak in a bubble bath and a glass of wine; instead, she’d been stuck in high people-pleasing mode, assuring Clint and Sam’s parents that of course this was fine, of course Pietro had asked before he’d made the suggestion, no problem whatsoever. Then she’d laid awake most of the night thinking about how having everyone at her house would mean that Steve would _definitely_ be there with Natasha and how up in the air everything still was between them. And how she’d agonized like a freshman over how to respond to his olive branch of cannoli for a whole day before she’d finally settled on texting him _‘Thank you’_ with a stupid pink heart and had heard nothing since. And how, once upon a time, he was supposed to be going with her to her third and final Christmas party of the year, dressed in ridiculous sweaters and with a mind to leave early so they could take advantage of one of their empty houses while the kids were at the Snowball.

And after a sleepless night, she’d had to clean all day because her house was never, ever, neat and tidy and ready for visitors.

“Mom can you help me take my curlers out?”

Darcy sighed and shook her head. “Yeah,” she called, starting the climb up the stairs. “On my way.”

Clint and his parents arrived first. Darcy made small talk while Wanda kept checking the front window and Pietro, and Clint awkwardly picked at the bowls of candy and the cookies she’d baked that afternoon. They looked so uncomfortable in their suits and ties. She’d had to stop herself from getting misty when she’d walked into Pietro’s room and found him in a video call with Erik, struggling to follow his father’s instructions for a four-in-hand knot.

He’d managed alright, a little crooked, but no one was going to call him out for it. Clint didn’t know what to do with the wrist corsage he’d brought for Natasha. He kept setting the box down and picking it back up, tucking it under his arm until his phone went off in his pocket and he checked it. “Sam just pulled up.”

Wanda’s eyes went wide as she darted away from the window and started upstairs again. “Where are you going?” Darcy asked with a confused laugh.

“I want to make an entrance!” she yelled over her shoulder.

“Make an entrance,” Darcy repeated under her breath, smothering a smile as she went to the door in anticipation of the bell. “They could probably hear her in Queens.”

By the time she closed the door again, her children had been bustled safely into the cars of the other parents, photos had been taken and already sent off to Erik and all sets of grandparents, and her house was calm and quiet.

It had been a bit of a whirlwind. One minute there was time to mingle and worry about what she’d say or do with her face once Steve arrived and then in the next the living room was full of people and there were kids to organize and flowers to help pin and photos to art-direct so everyone looked their best.

She barely had time to compliment Natasha on how well the shoes she’d borrowed matched her dress before she realized Steve had all but snuck in and was chatting quietly with Sam’s father closer to the door. Their eyes had met for a moment and she _thought_ she saw him smile. But then Clint’s mother had noticed the time, and everything kicked into high gear and that was the end of that.

Left alone for the night without a plan and without any desire to go to her office party alone, Darcy picked at a few cookies. She started to pour a glass of wine before she remembered she had agreed to share pick-up duty with Darlene if someone else dropped them off and poured what had hit her glass down the drain, settling for a fizzy water instead.

The lure of a new documentary series on married women who ended up murdered was drawing her back to the couch when the doorbell interrupted her chain of thought and rerouted her. She didn’t bother to check the peephole and realized when she opened the door that she was expecting to find anyone other than Steve Rogers standing on her porch.

She blinked in surprise. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he echoed, his breath drawing a cloud in the cold in front of his face.

“Do you…want to come in?” she asked after a moment when he didn’t seem to be rushing to explain his appearance on her front step.

“Sure,” he nodded once and waited until she’d stepped aside to cross back into the house. “Thanks.”

They stood just inside the door for a long second before Darcy cleared her throat. “Sorry, I can, uh, take your coat?”

He surprised her and shook his head. “No, that’s okay, I might not be staying.”

She blinked again. “You might not be staying?” she repeated, confused.

“Right.”

Her brow furrowed. “So you don’t…know?”

“Correct,” he nodded again, shifting his weight from foot to foot, the snow on his boots melting into the rubber mat on which he stood. “It sort of…depends.”

Darcy frowned. “Depends on what?”

“Depends on…you?” he said finally, stopping his anxious fidgeting as he untucked his hands from his pockets.

“On me?” she repeated. “Is this where I’m supposed to apologize?”

It was Steve’s turn to look confused. “What? No. _I’m_ trying to apologize.”

“But you already did,” she said with a vague point toward the kitchen. “And I was an idiot and I didn’t know how to respond and—”

“Wait, that wasn’t supposed to make you want to apologize to _me,_ ” Steve said talking over her. “That was just…” he shrugged. “I don’t know. That was like a prequel to the actual apology that I owe you.”

“Okay, but prequel or not,” she shook her head. “I still owe you an apology too.”

“For what?”

“For…” she stopped, having gotten so caught up in who was going to have the last word that her mind went blank. “For…overstepping with Natasha,” she decided finally. "I should have…not gotten involved.”

His face wrinkled in confusion. “No, I overreacted,” he said quickly. “I got defensive and stupid and I…” he let out a heavy breath. “I _want_ you to be involved,” he said after a moment. “I want Nat to be able to have someone in her life that she feels comfortable talking to, even if that person isn’t always me. And you’re…” he sighed again. “You’re a really good mom. You make this whole parenting thing look much easier than it is. You were just trying to help and…as you so kindly reminded me, I’m not great at accepting help.”

She winced, despite his compliment. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she admitted. “I know it’s just been the two of you for a really long time and…” she shrugged. “I still should have told you what was going on with her. And then when you sounded like you didn’t want me around anymore—”

“No, I shouldn’t have—”

She held up a hand. “I’m still a mess, Steve,” she offered a sad half-smile. “I thought maybe if I pretended like this was just a casual thing that it wouldn’t hurt if you decided it was a bad idea. But, uh,” she moved her shoulder a second time. “It…wasn’t.”

His face shifted slightly. He looked almost hopeful. “It wasn’t what?”

“A casual thing,” she clarified, even though he must have known that’s what she meant. “It’s never been a casual thing when it comes to you. I know we were only together again for a little while, but it felt like…” The thought she’d been pursuing died on the tip of her tongue; unsure what would happen if she kept talking, if she’d let something slip that would only linger awkwardly between them if he didn’t feel the same way.

“It felt like more than that,” he finished her thought softly.

She pressed her lips together and curled her hands inside the cuffs of her sweater. “Yeah,” she agreed. “It did.”

Steve let out another heavy exhale and ran a hand over his face, his palm scraped on his beard. “Darcy,” he said. “I don’t think I know how to do this anymore.”

“Neither do I,” she said with a soft laugh. “I thought that was obvious.” She pursed her lips again and dared herself to reach for his hand. “But I want to figure it out,” she went on. “With you.”

He curled his hand around hers, running his thumb gently over the tops of her fingers before he looked up again. “I want that too.”

She swallowed hard and took a step closer, cancelling the space between them. “Then why don’t you come in,” she said softly. “And stay for a while.”

Steve smiled and let go of her hand in favor of taking her face in his hands. “I’d like that,” he said before their lips touched. It was a slow, tentative kiss. Warm and sweet and just enough to give Darcy the courage to slowly undo the buttons on his coat. She felt him smile against her lips when she slipped her hands inside to warm them against the sweater he was wearing. “Hang on,” he said softly and pulled away to slip his scarf off, dropping it on the coat rack by the door.

Darcy’s heart stopped when she stepped back to give him space to shrug out of his coat. “Steve.”

“What?”

“What are you wearing?”

He looked down, his coat in hand, at the horrible blue and white pattered sweater she had purchased for him and blushed. “Uh…”

“You hate that sweater,” she declared, a smile tugging at her lips.

“I do,” he nodded, taking her hand when she offered it and letting her pull him back into the living room. “I absolutely hate this sweater. But it turns out that I hate not being with you even more; so I thought,” he shrugged, suddenly shy. “I told you I’d go with you to all of your parties this month and if you still wanted to go to your ugly sweater thing…”

Darcy giggled as they stopped in the doorway to the living room. She reached under the hem of his sweater and flicked the switch, illuminating all nine of the bulbs to light the menorah and let out a loud, ugly cackle of a laugh. “No,” she shook her head, switching it back off again. “As much as I appreciate this—” her hands ran up his arms and she let them rest on his shoulders, “incredible gesture I think I’d rather just stay right here tonight. If that’s alright with you.”

Steve grinned again as his hands fell to her hips and he tugged her back in. “That’s fine with me.”

***

Steve was home again when Darcy dropped Natasha off a little after ten-thirty. He was in the kitchen, drinking eggnog, listening to the sounds of her hanging her coat up and slipping out of her borrowed shoes, and pretending he was reading the book open on the counter in front of him.

“Hey Dad,” Natasha greeted casually, hanging in the doorway. Her cheeks were flushed, either from the cold or from dancing, and most of the curls had fallen from her hair. She looked happy.

“Hey,” he echoed, closing his book without saving his place. “How was it?”

“It was fun,” she said with a nod. “It was…” her cheeks and ears turned a darker pink. “It was really fun.”

“Good,” he mirrored her nod and waited for a second before he held up his nearly empty glass. “Nog?”

“Yeah,” she said, still glowing. “Okay.” Steve got up and Natasha took his seat so when he poured her a glass and himself a refill, they were facing each other. He waited another second while she took a sip and squirmed in her seat. “Can I tell you something and you promise not to freak out?”

Steve smiled. “I can…promise I’ll _try_ not freak out,” he said diplomatically. “But whatever it is, I want you to tell me.”

“That’s fair,” she said in an equal, even tone before she blushed again. “Clint told me he likes me,” she admitted, before she raced on. “ _Likes_ me likes me. Like. More than just a friend likes me.”

“I caught the distinction,” Steve assured her gently, happy that preteen romantic lingo hadn’t progressed too much further in the last twenty-five years. He raised his eyebrows. “And do you…feel the same way?”

Natasha bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah.”

He wanted to cry. He wanted to hug her and tell her she wasn’t allowed to keep growing or do anything other than stay his little girl forever. He wanted her mom to see how grown up she was all of a sudden. He pushed all of that down and managed a smile. “Clint’s got good taste,” he said and tipped the rim of his glass to hers. “I’m happy for you, sweetheart.” Natasha grinned again as she drank another gulp of her eggnog. “Just don’t go getting too serious too quick, alright?”

She nodded and drained the last of her glass. “I promise,” she said, and he believed her. “But I think I should probably take a shower and go to bed.”

“Okay,” he agreed, still smiling as she got up and put her glass in the dishwasher. “Goodnight.”

Natasha paused in the doorway, her hand on the frame and turned back. “Guess your apology cookies worked, huh?”

He blanched and looked up. “What?” he asked, a poor attempt at casual. “What—um—what makes you say that?”

His daughter bit back a smile. “Because Darcy was wearing your Hanukkah sweater when she came to pick us up.”

“Ah,” Steve looked down, his cheeks pink for a second before he coughed and looked back to her. “Well, let’s be honest, it looks better on her anyway.”

Natasha snorted and shook her head. “Can we invite the three of them over for Christmas Eve? Wanda said she’s never seen _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ and that just feels like a crime.”

He laughed quietly. “That _does_ feel like a crime,” he agreed. “Sure. We can have them over for Christmas Eve.”

Natasha crossed the room and surprised him with a tight hug around his middle. He bent and kissed the top of her head. “Darcy’s got great taste, Dad,” she said quietly and then raised her head to smile at him. “I’m really happy for you.”

He smoothed back her hair and kissed her forehead. “Thank you.”

“Goodnight,” she let him go and made her way upstairs.

As he heard the water running, Steve noticed his phone light up with a text. He opened it to find a picture Darcy had taken of herself, pulling a face and pointing to his sweater hanging off her shoulders. In their defense, neither of them had been thinking about much more than getting clothes back _on_ in time for her to pick up the kids as promised. There was just one word beneath her photo. _Whoops._

 _We’re super busted,_ he responded, grinning widely. _So, there’s no reason for me to take that sweater back now._

There was a slight delay before Darcy sent another photo, this time with the knitted menorah lit up and her lips pressed in a kiss. _Good. That just means I can buy you an even uglier one for next year._

He laughed and finished his eggnog in a single gulp. _I can’t wait,_ he wrote back and realized that was true. For the first time in a very long time, he couldn’t wait—he was excited for what might happen next. With Darcy, with their kids, with all the bumps and sharp edges they still had to smooth out of their relationship.

She answered on the first ring. “I’m not kidding,” she said laughing. “I’m keeping this sweater.”

“Good,” he replied. “I feel like that was your master plan anyway.”

“Why are you calling me?” she asked after she’d giggled again. “Did you miss me?”

He couldn’t help the smile that came over his face. “I did,” he said truthfully. “And I wanted to ask if you’d like to come over for Christmas Eve. Apparently Wanda’s never seen Charlie Brown’s Christmas special.”

“ _What_?” Darcy demanded, making him laugh again. “That’s unacceptable. Jewish or not, what kind of mother am I?”

“Is that a yes?” he asked, still chuckling.

Darcy paused and he could have sworn he heard her bite back a smile. “That’s a yes,” she agreed. “That sounds really nice.”

Steve felt the unexpected warmth of contentment sweep over him again, covering him like a blanket at the softness in her voice. “I might make up an excuse to see you before then,” he admitted.

She laughed again. “I certainly hope so.”

“Goodnight, Darcy.”

“Goodnight.”

They hung up. Steve cleaned up the kitchen and went to be with a smile on his face.

_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> Le photoset: https://idontgettechnology.tumblr.com/post/636010714409172992/and-you-would-be-there-too-christmas-2020
> 
> Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6x6EbEq17TnGwPnAlhKVAu?si=GUsRbWYiR562W_EM1s0kbA


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